November 2012 Pervert avoids jail over 60,000 child images haul A FATHER caught with more than 60,000 images of children on his computer was obsessed with “cataloguing and collecting” the sick haul, a court has heard. Michael Ragan avoided a jail sentence at Edinburgh Sheriff Court yesterday after previously pleading guilty to downloading the images from the internet. The 57-year-old also “Photoshopped” snaps he had taken of a young girl, who was a relative, into indecent images. Ragan was put on probation for three years and ordered to carry out 300 hours of unpaid work. Sheriff Elizabeth Jarvie QC ordered that Ragan be banned from using the internet or having contact with any under-16s without permission from his probation supervisor. Police officers who searched his computer found he kept a total of 67,889 indecent photographs. Detectives found 273 pornographic movies featuring children on the PC, which was seized following a search of his home in Granton Mains Vale. Officers acted after receiving a tip-off that Ragan visited child porn websites between November 2004 and November 2005. Last month, he pleaded guilty to two charges of possessing child pornography. Defence agent Mark Harrower told the court yesterday that his client had made a “full and frank” confession when he was arrested by police. Mr Harrower said that “99 per cent” of the images found on Ragan’s computer were at Level 1, and those type of photographs were the “area of interest” for his client. Level 1 on the five point scale, established by UK’s Sentencing Advisory Panel and adopted in 2002, involves nude images of children. Mr Harrower said that his client suffered from a “mild form of compulsive personality disorder” and that the “cataloguing and collecting” of the images was a large part of his reason for downloading them. Five of the images on Ragan’s computer were photos of a relative that had been taken with her parent’s permission. Ragan had then altered the images using Photoshop. Ragan gave officers the name of the girl, who was now 20, and she confirmed that “nothing untoward had happened”. The court heard that Ragan had been off work with stress following his arrest, and was later made redundant when the company folded, leaving him currently unemployed. Sheriff Jarvie placed Ragan on the sex offenders register for three years. October 2012 Man guilty of downloading child porn A MAN who downloaded more than 60,000 images of child pornography from the internet was arrested following a tip-off to police. Michael Ragan, 57, was caught after police raided his home in Granton Mains Vale, Edinburgh, in December 2011. Yesterday, Edinburgh Sheriff Court heard how officers who searched his computer found he kept a total of 67,889 indecent photographs on the machine. Detectives also found 273 pornographic movies featuring children on the PC which was seized following a search of his property. Officers acted after receiving a tip-off that Ragan visited websites which hosted child porn between November 2004 and November 2005. The court heard how officers also found a series of images of a young girl which Ragan had manipulated to make illegal and that Ragan immediately confessed his wrong doing to police. Ragan, a first offender, pleaded guilty to two charges of possessing child pornography. Sentence was deferred for reports about his mental health. He will be sentenced on November 13.