A CHARITY boss has been placed on the sex register despite claiming child pornography images found on his computer had been put there by hackers.
William Wood told a court his laptop had been targeted by crooks who downloaded the indecent images of children as young as four-years-old to the device before then deleting them.
Retired IT expert Wood said he had no knowledge of the disgusting images – some at the most serious end of the scale – when police raided his home in December 2015.
The 61-year-old, who ran African child education charity The Dignity Project, said his Twitter and bank accounts had previously been targeted by criminals.
He added the horrific pictures must have been downloaded to his computer without his knowledge.
But Wood was deemed to be lying when a jury unanimously found him guilty of two charges of possessing and downloading indecent of images of children at his home in Corstorphine, following a two-day trial at Edinburgh Sheriff Court.
The court heard traces of 138 images and one horrific movie were found on three devices at the Edinburgh home Wood shares with wife Barbara, 70.
Police Scotland forensic expert DC Alan McConnell said the files had been deleted but said traces of the search terms and file names were still embedded in their device.
He added the disturbing movie had been downloaded to Wood’s computer in November 2015 and had been viewed twice before being deleted.
Sheriff Fiona Tait deferred full sentence.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article