November 2012

Teenage babysitter sexually abused young boy and girl in his care

A sexual predator who abused two young children while babysitting has been jailed for two years.

Passing sentence at the High Court in Edinburgh on Tuesday, Lord Bracadale told Christopher Birrell: “These are serious offences. In each case the children were very young.”

The judge added that he took into account that Birrell, now 22, was a child at the time he offended and that he had suffered difficult personal circumstances.

He also noted that the first-time offender had expressed remorse for his actions. However, he insisted a custodial sentence was the only appropriate punishment and jailed Birrell for two years.

Birrell, from Bonnyrigg in Midlothian, had earlier admitted indecent behaviour towards the seven-year-old boy and five-year-old girl in 2006 in nearby Gorebridge.

The court heard that the boy later revealed to a relative that he had been the victim of sexual abuse after playing with his pet dogs. One of the animals jumped on him and he said: “Don’t rape me.”

The relative questioned him over what he had said but the child only mumbled and was rebuked for joking about such matters.

However, he later revealed Birrell had “done something” and with some difficulty gave details of how his abuser made him perform sex acts and molested him.

Advocate depute Alison Di Rollo said: “He described the accused chasing him when he played in the street and threatening to batter him if he told anyone.”

The court heard that Birrell had played a game of “dares” with the young girl and put his hand down her trousers.

Defence solicitor advocate Dave Allan said Birrell had been subjected to bullying which resulted in an isolated period of his life. He added that Birrell was aged 15 to 16 at the time of the offences.

Lord Bracadale ordered that Birrell should be kept under supervision for a further two years and be placed on the sex offenders register.

September 2009

Shamed dad used disguised child abuse pics website

A DAD has been banned from using the internet after logging-onto a fake astronomy website that was actually plagued with child abuse images.

Francis Cassidy, 48, had over 400 images of pre-teen children being abused, 19 of which were at the second-worst level of depravity known to police.

He escaped prison today (Tues) with community service at Edinburgh Sheriff Court after being deemed “low risk” to the public and his own children.

But a sheriff warned him that he would be jailed if he ever looks at illegal porn again.

Police scouring the worldwide web found the bogus astronomy site in 2007 and began hunting down the people visiting it.

They raided Cassidy’s Dalkeith home in February last year and seized his computer after matching it to one which had visited the shocking kid porn page.

Fiscal depute Ruth Ross Davie said: “A police operation, along with the child exploitation and online protection organisation, found a website which was an astronomy website corrupted with indecent images of children.

“He admitted owning the equipment and cooperated with police officers, acknowledging that he had viewed certain website which had pictures on them which could be deemed to be illegal.”

No access

But Cassidy’s defence agent Stewart Carson insisted the sick pictures were never intentionally saved onto his computer.

He said: “He has no access to the images. He only viewed them on the website and never saved them or downloaded them.

“The Children and Families team had to take a “better safe than sorry” approach in conducting an assessment and are satisfied he is of low risk to his children.

“He demonstrates an apparent appreciation of the nature of his offending.”

Sheriff Derrick McIntyre ordered Cassidy to do 160 hours of unpaid work and put him on the Sex Offenders’ Register for three years.

Not victimless

He told him: “You have pled guilty to having in your possession indecent images of young teenagers in their pre-teens.

“But as I understand it you hadn’t downloaded them, you merely looked at them.

“These are not victimless crimes.

“If it wasn’t for people viewing the images like you did, then maybe they wouldn’t exist.

“You are not to have unsupervised access to the internet and you are not to have unsupervised contact with females under the age of 16.

“If you commit offences of this nature again then you can expect a custodial sentence.”