Edinburgh crime: Vile pensioner caught with more than one million child abuse images escapes jail sentence

Leslie Rutherford, 69, was found to be in possession of the huge amount of horrific material - with some images depicting infants - when police raided his former home in Edinburgh.

Edinburgh Sheriff Court was told the massive amount of pictures and videos discovered on devices belonging to the OAP meant that police investigators were forced to give up grading them.

Prosecutor Morgan Beattie told the court Rutherford was a registered sex offender after he was convicted of possessing more than 370,000 child abuse images in 2021.

As part of his sentence police officers were required to attend his home to check any electronic devices, and during one visit it was found he had accessed a website named ‘Sugar Candy’.

Leslie Rutherford, 69, pictured outside Edinburgh Sheriff Court. | Alexander Lawrie

Ms Beattie said: “On this website, the accused had viewed an image of a female, aged five or six years old, wearing swimwear and lying on a beach.

“Given this, Mr Rutherford was cautioned and asked if there were any further indecent images of children on the computer. He replied that there wasn’t but was noted by the detectives to be visibly shaking.”

The fiscal said officers seized all his devices and during a forensic examination “so many files were identified on the devices that it was agreed with the Crown that the Cybercrime Unit would stop grading the images after a time”.

The fiscal told the court hundreds of thousands of child abuse images were discovered hidden within computer folders containing photographs of a house renovation. Depraved images of mainly female children were found in folders named ‘Little girls on the beach and pool 5’ and the files were said to feature victims aged between “infant and 15-years-old”.

Ms Beattie said there were close to one million files on the device that “the [police] database had not previously encountered and required grading” but remained uncategorised due to “time constraints”.

The fiscal added: “Across the [three] devices examined, there were still 1,554,515 media files left to be graded.”

Lawyer Yvonne McKenna, defending, told the court the offending took place around the same time of her client’s previous case in 2021 and he has been suffering from bowel and prostate cancer.

Ms McKenna said: “I think what has happened is the police didn’t take some of these devices at the time of the original prosecution and they have come back to have a meeting with him and they have found these devices at that time.”

Rutherford, now of Kirkcaldy, Fife, had previously pleaded guilty to possessing child abuse images at a hearing at the capital’s sheriff court and he was back in the dock for sentencing on Friday, September 13.

Sheriff Robert Fife said: “I am not sending you to prison today but I will make it clear to you if you come before the court again or breach this order you will be looking at probably three years.

“I am going to follow the recommendation in the report and put on a supervision order for three years but you must appreciate these are very serious offences.

“I will set a pre-Christmas review and if you are not behaving then you won’t be going home for Christmas.”

Rutherford was placed on supervision for three years and on his name will be added to the sex offenders register for the same term. Sheriff Fife also imposed a conduct requirement that the pensioner must attend sessions with the sex offenders organisation Moving Forward Making Changes.

Rutherford pleaded guilty to possessing indecent images of children at his former home at Glasgow Road, Ratho Station, Edinburgh, between January 10 and September 28, 2021.