A 73-year-old man has admitted possessing nearly 900 indecent images of children.

Donald Keith Forsythe appeared at Douglas Courthouse on May 8, entering guilty pleas to eight counts of the offence.

The images were said to feature girls aged between eight and 15.

He will be sentenced in summary court on June 19, after a probation report has been prepared.

Prosecuting advocate Victoria Kinrade told the court that a search warrant was executed at Forsythe’s home, at Newtown Estate in Santon, in September last year.

A number of electronic devices were seized by police.

Forsythe was interviewed and confirmed that the devices all belonged to him, and that no-one else had access to them.

They were examined and 889 still images were found, along with four moving images.

The images were assessed using the Copine scale, which measures the severity level of an image from one to five, with five being the most severe.

All the images were categorised at level one.

Forsythe told police he had been using a specific online network for discussion of topics and sharing of files.

He said he paid a subscription and that advertised content featuring girls aged ‘18 plus’ .

He claimed that he had therefore believed all images would be of girls over 18, and that he wouldn’t have gone on it otherwise.

The images found were said to feature girls being abused on public transport, but Forsythe said he believed it was staged, and said that the women must have consented or it wouldn’t be allowed on the internet.

He said he had been worried because he didn’t want his wife to find the images.

Forsythe said that, on one occasion, he had seen him looking at certain photos, but the images had not been indecent.

He said that he had been diagnosed with a serious illness and the images had been a form of escape, and that he had not been intimate with his wife as he feared she might become pregnant again.

Ms Kinrade said that the case was borderline when it came to deciding whether it should be committed to the Court of General Gaol Delivery, but that perhaps given the number of images found, it should go to the higher court.

Forsythe was represented in court by advocate Paul Glover, who asked for a probation report to be prepared before sentencing.

Mr Glover submitted that, given the guilty pleas, and the fact that all the images had been assessed at level one, the case was suitable to remain in summary court.

The advocate went on to make a bail application, which was not opposed by the prosecution, saying that Forsythe had not been allowed to return to his family home and had been staying at hotels in Douglas.

Magistrates accepted summary court jurisdiction, and granted bail, with conditions that Forsythe reside at his hotel in Douglas, have no unsupervised contact with anyone aged under 16, and abide by computer restrictions.