Supervision order for man who possessed indecent images of children

A man who admitted possessing indecent images of children has been placed on supervision and given 200 hours of unpaid work

Alvar Foster, 23, pleaded guilty to taking or permitting to be taken indecent photographs of children between 9th and 12th September 2016 when he appeared at Lerwick Sheriff Court last month

Foster, of Market Street, Lerwick, was first found to be in possession of the images when police executed a drug-related search warrant at his address.

The court previously heard there were a total of 88 images and 24 videos (with a combined runtime of over eight hours) were retrieved from the laptop.

Of those 18 images and 14 videos were Category A, the most serious of the categories.

Foster appeared for sentencing at Lerwick Sheriff Court on Wednesday, after his case had been deferred to allow for background reports.

Defence agent Tommy Allan said the offences occurred over a period of four days and it was a limited amount of images.

Mr Allan said some of the items were inaccessible, which he said, would support what Foster said about attempting to delete images after seeing what they involved.

The defence agent added it appeared to be a situation where whatever his client’s state of mind he had gone down a path and quickly realised it was not the way he wanted to go.

Mr Allan said Foster’s computer was examined for something completely different and the images remained on his computer.

He said his client was someone who “needs to get out of his bedroom and go and engage with the rest of the world”. The report before the court shows he was starting to do that, he said.

Sheriff Ian Cruickshank said the offences happened over four days and there was credible evidence that Foster had desisted from downloading any other material outwith that four-day period.

While the offence was “abhorrent” he said many of the images were at the low end of the categories that came into play and Foster was a first offender. For guideline purposes, he said this was a small number of images

Sheriff Cruickshank handed Foster a community payback order with supervision for two years and six months.

He also granted a crown motion for forfeiture of the laptop and Foster is subject to the notification requirements of Sexual Offences Act 2003 for the period of supervision.