HAMILTON MAN STEWART LEE ADMITS POSSESSING CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE IMAGES IN APRIL 2009

In April 2009, Stewart Lee, a 21-year-old resident of Hamilton, confessed to possessing child sexual abuse images. Lee pled guilty to a charge of possessing indecent images of children at his residence on Brora Crescent, covering the period from October 7, 2006, to August 22, 2007.

The prosecution accepted his pleas of not guilty to additional charges, including distributing a number of indecent photographs of children downloaded from the internet, and possessing indecent images downloaded from the internet.

During a court session on Monday, fiscal depute Jim Leck explained that delays in handling the case resulted from extensive inquiries into Lee’s activities. Police executed a warrant at Lee’s home in September 2007 and seized his computer, which contained two hard drives.

One of the drives held 79 still images and nine moving images, while the other contained two still images, four moving images, and an additional image in the 'unallocated' space—an area where deleted files can often be recovered with specialized software.

According to Mr. Leck, police also recovered seven disks from Lee’s home, which contained a total of 50 still images and 15 moving images.

During police interviews, Lee acknowledged that he obtained the material from the internet and later copied it onto disks. This statement aligned with the findings of forensic analysts.

Sheriff Joyce Powrie postponed sentencing Lee until May 21 to allow for the preparation of various reports.