A man suspected of downloading child sex abuse images protested to police officers that material on his computers was “just porn”.
But experts later found nearly 600 indecent images of children on Robert Kennedy’s devices.
Kennedy, 51, of Burnside Road, Newarthill, avoided a prison sentence at Hamilton Sheriff Court on Friday.
He admitted possessing the offensive photographs and videos at his home over a five-year period.
Jennifer Cunningham, prosecuting, said police officers went there shortly before 7am on February 11 last year.
When told the reason for their visit, Kennedy insisted the material was nothing to do with his female partner, who was also in the house.
Ms Cunningham stated: “He pointed to two computers and said ‘I’m a guy. It was just porn. I didn’t know it had anything to do with kids’.”
The officers also recovered a scrap of paper with a handwritten reference to internet searches for teenagers.
Defence agent Margaret Chalmers said the “vast majority” of images recovered were in the least serious category.
One of the computers had a system that allowed it to “generate images once certain sites had been accessed”.
Mrs Chalmers added: “That does not mean my client was aware of all these images or accessed them. Some of them could not be accessed, even by the user.”
She said that, since his arrest, Kennedy has completed a course run by the Stop It Now organisation.
Sheriff Douglas Brown placed Kennedy on a community payback order and said he will be on the sex offenders’ register for three years.
