Edinburgh butcher Jonathan Crombie put on sex offenders register
An award-winning Edinburgh butcher has been placed on the sex offenders register for two years for possessing indecent images of children.
Jonathan Crombie, 45, whose family has a shop in Broughton Street, has also been ordered to carry out 100 hours of unpaid work in the community.
He pled guilty earlier to downloading the images in the shop between 5 September 2005 and 17 January 2013.
Sentence had been deferred for background reports.
Edinburgh Sheriff Court heard previously that a computer seized by police held 71 still images and 15 movies, but only one image was accessible.
Another piece of equipment, a hard-drive, contained 69 movies, all of which were inaccessible.
Defence solicitor Mark Harrower told Sheriff Nigel Ross that Crombie, from Edinburgh, had deleted the images himself and the hard-drive images had been inaccessible because of the age of the equipment.
The lawyer also said the images were at the lower end of the scale.
Mr Harrower said his client had no previous convictions and had "suffered greatly" as a result of the offence.
"He has resigned from the company for which he has worked for 30 years, having started as a child. He has also apologised to the staff," he said.
Mr Harrower added the social work report assessed Crombie as being at low risk of re-offending, no risk of serious harm to the community and no risk to children.
Sheriff Ross stressed it was not a victimless crime, but said there were some "mitigating circumstances".
"The number is very low, compared with the norm in these cases, and many of them were beyond your own ability to access," he said.
"They were not shared by anyone and, most important, was the assessment of the report that you bear no danger to children and no risk of serious harm to the community."