iStockA man was caught with 117 images of child sexual exploitation or abuse on his hard drive at his parents home.
Stephen Burrell, 35, was caught with the images at the property in Glasgow’s Drumchapel on March 19 2021.
Burrell – who has an identical previous conviction – claimed the hard drive was not found by police during an investigation for his earlier matter.
On Monday, he pled guilty at Glasgow Sheriff Court to possession of indecent images of children.
Burrell also admitted taking or permitting to be taken indecent images of children.
The court heard police searched the property and were alerted to the hard drive by Burrell.
He said: “This might be of interest to you.”
The hard drive was examined and found to contain 54 still images and 63 moving images of female children aged between three and six years old.
Prosecutor Lauren Sangray said: “These were child sexual exploitation or abuse images.”
The dates of creation of the images were between August 2009 and December 2015.
Brian Lannigan, defending, told the court: “Police failed to seize the hard drive [for his previous conviction] and Mr Burrell was originally unaware. He was not present during that search.
“At some stage after the prosecution the hard drive was found behind CDs – it fell behind and was not recovered.
“The big mistake was he did not dispose of it immediately.”
The lawyer added that the hard drive – which also contained pictures of his late uncle – had not been accessed since the last conviction.
Sentence was deferred pending background reports until next month by Sheriff Daniel Kelly.
Burrell, still of Drumchapel, was put on the sex offenders register and had his bail continued in the meantime.
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