Edinburgh man caught with horror collection of child abuse images jailed and placed on sex offenders register

An Edinburgh man who was caught with a horror collection of child abuse images has been jailed for 16 months and had his name added to the sex offenders register for 10 years.

Martin Lipscombe was found with more than 4000 images and videos depicting youngsters as young as four years old being sexually abused while “blindfolded” and with their “limbs bound”. 

Martin Lipscombe, 33, pictured outside Edinburgh Sheriff Court. | AL

The 33-year-old was caught with the vile horde just 15 months after he escaped a jail sentence for a previous child sex offence. Lipscombe was found with disgusting videos of him performing a solo sex act over children’s clothing in 2021. He also took pictures of a 12-year-old girl and her clothing hanging on a washing line and sent the images to an unknown male.

He was placed on a supervision order and the sex offenders register for two years and banned from entering the grounds of schools, nurseries and children’s playparks.

Lipscombe returned to the dock at Edinburgh Sheriff Court last month to admit possessing indecent images of children at his home between November 2022 and January last year.

Prosecutor Chelsea Martin said police received intelligence Lipscombe was accessing child abuse images and turned up at his home at around 8am on January 6 last year. The court was told the sales assistant was at home with his grandmother and he had handed over a mobile phone to officers stating “he knew what this is about”.

Ms Martin said a forensic analysis showed the device held 4335 child abuse images with 591 rated as Category A - the worst end of the scale. The fiscal said there were also 73 videos - 38 at Category A - depicting young children being sexually abused by adults found held on the device.

The court was told the victims were “female children aged between four and 15 years of age”. Ms Martin added: “Some of the pictures depicted the children blindfolded and some had their limbs bound.”

The fiscal said police officers also uncovered chat logs containing around 20,000 messages where Lipscombe had sent “photos of a young female child” to another person.

Last week Sheriff Julius Komorowski jailed Lipscombe for 16 months and placed him on the sex offenders register for 10 years.

Lipscombe pleaded guilty to possessing indecent images of children at his home between November 2, 2022 and January 6 last year. He also admitted to distributing indecent images of children to others from his home between November 2 and December 28, 2022.