David Duncan

David Duncan, a 45-year-old unemployed engineer from Kirkcaldy in Fife, Scotland, was sentenced at the High Court in Edinburgh on 15 June 2005 for secretly filming a teenage girl in her bathroom and possessing a vast collection of child pornography. Duncan had installed a hidden camera behind a false mirror in the girl's bathroom at a house in Glasgow, capturing footage of her showering between 1999 and 2003, when she was aged between 12 and 16. He stored 40,000 images of the naked youngster on his computers, along with more than 82,000 indecent images of children downloaded over the same period.

The case came to light when the teenager accidentally discovered the camera equipment concealed behind a tile on the bathroom wall, prompting her to alert the authorities. Police raided a house in Torrance, where they uncovered Duncan's extensive pornographic collection. A child protection expert who examined the material described it as the worst he had ever seen, leading Judge Lord MacFadyen to decline viewing it himself, warning that exposure might necessitate counselling for those who did.

Duncan pleaded guilty to charges of covertly recording the girl for his lewd gratification, breaching the peace, and possessing indecent computer images of children from January 1999 to May 2004. Earlier, at the High Court in Glasgow, details emerged of how he had hooked up the camera to film the victim over four years. The prosecution accepted pleas of not guilty to additional charges of lewd and libidinous practices towards another girl. During the sentencing hearing in Edinburgh, Duncan displayed no emotion as the judge imposed a six-year extended sentence: three years in custody followed by three years of supervision upon release. He was also placed on the sex offenders' register.

This case, reported by BBC News on 15 June 2005, highlights the severe nature of Duncan's offences, which involved the prolonged sexual exploitation of a minor through voyeuristic filming and the hoarding of child sexual abuse material. Police involved in the investigation were from the Scottish force, with the raid occurring in Torrance near Glasgow.