A vile predator who trawled the dark web to collect thousands of images of children being abused, women and children having sex with animals, and a man having sex with a human corpse on a mortuary slab, has been jailed for 20 months.
Ryan Evans, 26, downloaded "substantial numbers" of illegal images from the dark web over several years.
Falkirk Sheriff Court heard he was caught after police acting on a tip off raided the home he shared with his mother in Langlees, Falkirk.
Prosecutor Kristina Kelly said computer equipment seized was analysed and found to contain more than 12,000 still and moving images of child abuse, and extreme porn, many of them of the most serious category.
Officers found four videos of extreme hardcore porn on Evans's devices.
Ms Kelly said: "On one laptop there were two videos of females having sexual activity with horses.
"On the other laptop there was a video showing a body lying on a mortuary table.
Ms Kelly said an adult male was shown performing a solo sex act in the presence of the dead body.
On another device officers found images of young girls.
During a police interview, Evans admitted downloading the material twice a month, over "many years".
He said he used "Tor" software to access the material, and a site called Top Links, and claimed he got "a kick out of accessing illegal images, rather than having an attraction to children in a sexual manner".
He told police: "The idea that I can be attracted to children is physically abhorrent to me, and I just want to make that clear."
Evans, of Torridon Avenue, Langlees, Falkirk, pleaded guilty to possessing child porn and extreme porn at his home address between September 2016 and 17th April 2019, when the police raid took place at 7.20 am.
Representing himself, Evans, a first offender, insisted he was not interested in the pornography itself.
He said: "It doesn't justify it or excuse it, but the content was never the focus of it.
"It was the fact that the act of getting it was illegal, and how that felt, and not the content itself."
Imposing the 20-month jail term, Sheriff Derek Hamilton told Evans on Thursday [Feb 4th]: "Your justification in a police interview was that these images would exist whether or not you viewed them.
"But without the demand for obscene images like this there may well be no supply.
"For every image of a child, there is a child victim.
"Your method of collecting them was to go into an area of the so-called dark web where these images are available, and you did that often, and over a number of years, downloading images of the most extreme level.
"Your behaviour was quite deliberate."
In addition to the prison sentence, Evans was placed on the sex offenders' register for seven years and reported to Scottish Ministers to be put on the list of people unsuitable to work with children or vulnerable adults.
He showed no emotion as he was handcuffed to a security guard, and led to the cells.
