A team leader at a children's activity centre was caught with a stash of child pornography secretly stored on his laptop computer.
Mathew Faulds, pictured above, was caught with nearly six hours worth of video clips featuring children as young as four being sexually abused by adults.
Perth Sheriff Court was told on Thursday that some of the images were at the worst end of the standard Copine scale used to measure the severity of child porn images - featuring sadism or bestiality.
Faulds, 24, was caught when his room-mate at the PGL Adventure site at Dalguise near Dunkeld, Perthshire, borrowed his hard drive to try and watch a film on his computer.
The fellow instructor was horrified to find hidden files on the computer which clearly contained child porn videos and he called in centre management, who contacted the police.
Fiscal depute Charmaine Cole told the court: "The accused was employed as a team leader and activities instructor working with children aged from seven to 17.
"The organisation with which he worked provided trips and adventure holidays for children within that age range. As a result of these proceedings he was suspended.
Faulds continued to deny the offence when he was interviewed by police, but later confessed after asking the police what would happen to him if he admitted it.
He said: "Right, I did. I was into child pornography. I thought I had deleted it before I went to Dalguise. I know it's wrong. I thought it was wrong, the videos. I just wanted to change my life.
"He denied ever having sexual feelings towards children he had been working with in the course of his employment. I must stress none of the images were of children from his employment.
"It would appear all of the images had been downloaded from the internet. Twenty-three video clips showed sexual abuse of children."
She told the court that Faulds first accessed the files on 16 January and continued to view them while he was working with children until 9 August.
Faulds, of Cheviot Crescent, Dundee, admitted that between 16 January and 9 August this year he possessed child pornography at PGL Adventures, based at Dalguise House - former home of Beatrix Potter.
Sheriff William Gilchrist placed Faulds on the sex offenders register and deferred sentence until next month for the preparation of social background and released him on bail.
Last updated: 05 November 2009, 14:09
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