Child Porn Images IT Man Jailed

A former scout leader who was caught with a haul of child pornography has been jailed for nine months. Computer programmer Clive Holroyd, from Drymen in Stirlingshire, was caught in a transatlantic crackdown codenamed Operation Falcon.

At Stirling Sheriff Court, the 43-year-old was also told he would be supervised for two years, after he admitted the offence.

He formerly led the 25th Forth Valley (Balfron) Scouts group.

Police found that Holroyd had used his credit card to download photographs from the internet of children being abused and had installed specialist software to hide his activities.

Despite the attempted cover up, Central Scotland Police recovered more than 100 pornographic pictures of children from his computer.

Sheriff Wyllie Robertson told Holroyd, who was also placed on the sex offenders’ register: “It’s clear that the images recovered by the police were only those downloaded in the days immediately prior to their arrival.

“One reason that many more were not recovered was because, no doubt using your expertise in computing, you installed a sophisticated software wiping programme that wiped previous images.

“You did that because, firstly, you didn’t want your wife and children to discover what you had been doing, and secondly because you didn’t want to get caught by the police.”

Holroyd committed the offence between January 2003 and June 2004, with his membership of the Scout movement ending that year.

Scottish Scout Association chief executive Jim Duffy said none of Holroyd’s offences occurred in connection with any organised Scouting activities.