1,100 child porn photos found on DJ’s computer

Jun 26 2009 by Les Stewart, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

A PART-TIME disc jockey now has an unenviable record after he was convicted of possessing child porn, writes Les Stewart.

But Vincent John Walker (34), of Wester Gospetry Cottages, Milnathort, escaped a jail term when he appeared for sentence at Perth Sheriff Court this week.

Instead, he was ordered to carry out 240 hours of community service – a direct alternative to prison.

He also had his name added to the Sex Offenders’ Register.

A computer hard drive, on which police discovered more than 1,000 pornographic images of children, some as young as four, was confiscated.

Walker, a gas engineer, was convicted after a three-day jury trial of having 1,105 indecent images of children in his possession at his former home in Gorse Loan, Perth, between January 1, 2003, and November 8, 2007.

A second charge, which alleged that he took, permitted to be taken or made the images was found not proven. Walker had denied both charges.

The court was told that police obtained a search warrant to search Gorse Loan shortly after 7am on November 8, 2007.

They took possession of his laptop computer and hard drive and sent them to the force’s Technical Support Unit for examination.

All the files on the hard-drive had been ‘deleted’ but were recovered using forensic computer equipment.

The images were divided into a scale of one to five, depending on the level of severity of the sexual content. Of the 1,105 indecent images, 107 were on level four, 250 at level two and 748 at level one.

The children in the level four images ranged from aged four-14 and one of them showed a child, aged between six and nine, taking part in a sex act with an adult male.

Walker told the jury that he had no idea where the images had come from and suggested that computer technicians could have left the pictures on his hard drive after he sent it to them to be repaired.

He also claimed that an ex-partner or friends attending a party at his house could have been responsible.

Walker, who has no previous convictions, told police he was “gobsmacked” after being told that police had found the photographs.

Sheriff Lindsay Foulis said he took into account the fact that less than 10 per cent of the images were in the second most serious category, while 75 per cent in the least serious.