Alexander Crawford - the worst child pornograpy ever

A RETIRED police office who collected some of the worst child pornography seized in Scotland was jailed yesterday for two years and three months.

Alexander Crawford, 63, downloaded almost 1,800 indecent images from the internet, and admitted to detectives that it had become an obsession.

Judge Lord Mackay said most of the images were of children under 12 and some featured infants less than a year old.

Lord Mackay said: "The police surgeon whose duty it was to view and classify these images described them as depicting children subjected to abhorrent and degrading sexual practices of extreme depravity. He states the images were some of the worst he had ever had to view."

The judge told Crawford, of Dunoon, Argyll, the sentence would have been longer, but he took into account that Crawford was a first offender and he had pleaded guilty.

Crawford will be supervised for a year at the end of his prison term.

The offences were committed at his home between 8 August and 14 November last year.

Graeme Jessop, the advocate-depute, said Crawford had been caught after taking his computer for repair.

An employee at the shop in Dunoon ran a check, Mr Jessop explained, which "identified graphic images of children being sexually abused". The employee called police, who searched Crawford's home and found compact discs containing 1,782 indecent images of children.

The defence counsel, Tony Graham, told the High Court in Edinburgh: "He has managed for a substantial part of his adult life to contribute to society. He will forever be branded a sex offender, and he realises he has no-one to blame but himself."