Darryl Burnside

Darryl Burnside, a 50-year-old police officer serving in Oban, was raided at his home by colleagues in 2018, uncovering a cache of child pornography on his tablet and Kindle devices. The material included indecent photographs of a girl aged eight to ten, as well as a twisted video featuring a baby less than 18 months old in a nappy, who was in obvious distress. Some of the images were classified as category A, the most extreme level of child sexual abuse material.

Oban Sheriff Court heard details of the horrific content during Burnside's trial in August 2018. Despite his previous commendations for heroism—including the Chief Constable’s High Commendation in 1996 for saving a 62-year-old man from a house fire and rescuing a teenage boy from the sea in 2011—Burnside's actions revealed a dark secret. He had been hailed as a hero within Police Scotland, but this discovery shattered that image.

In September 2018, Sheriff William Gilchrist sentenced Burnside to eight months in prison. The case, covered by the Daily Record on 27 May 2019, underscored the betrayal felt by the force and the community, as Burnside was placed on the sex offenders’ register following his conviction for possessing child sex abuse images.