April 2006 Man jailed for Orkney porn haul An Orkney computer engineer caught with thousands of child pornography images has been jailed for two years. Colin Wilson, 39, now of Elgin, Moray, admitted downloading 23,000 indecent pictures of girls under 12. At Inverness Sheriff Court, the father-of-three’s lawyer likened his offending to “train spotting” at Inverness Sheriff Court. However, Sheriff Charles McNair said his offences were not a victimless crime as children were being abused. Wilson was placed on licence for a further 18 months and ordered to be on the Sex Offenders Register indefinitely. The court was told Wilson fled his home island of Orkney after the offences came to light. Fiscal Stella Swan said the offences emerged after an operation involving several law enforcement agencies cracking down on child pornography. She said: “He obtained images and film over a long period of time in a very organised manner. This is the largest case of its nature dealt with by Northern Constabulary.” Defence lawyer Marc Dickson claimed his client became interest in porn during the break-up of his marriage. He said: “Initially it was adult orientated, but it progressed to him downloading images of a paedophilic nature. “He worked as a computer engineer and he explained that when one works with computers one develops a mechanism of storing information in file structure. It becomes second nature. ‘Public duty’ “It is almost akin to train spotting. “It was of genuine surprise to him how many images were on his computer.” Mr Dickson stressed none of the images were shared with others. He added that his client had moved on since the offences were discovered, having formed a new relationship in his new home of Elgin, where he hoped to start a science degree at Moray College. Sheriff McNair accepted the majority of images were at the lower scale of child porn but that there were a significant number of films which were far worse. He told Wilson: “I do not consider I would be doing my public duty if I did not sentence you to imprisonment for these offences. “The downloading of images from the internet is not a victimless crime. “These children whose images you were watching were being abused in the most foul manner. “If people did not view this material then it would not being taken in the first place. It is the viewing of these images that I consider contributes significantly to the abuse of children.”