A RETIRED RAF warrant officer who featured on the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in 2012 faces a possible jail term after he convinced a 10-year-old girl to engage with him on the internet for his own sexual pleasure.
At Cupar Sheriff Court Steven McLaren, 54, of Campbell Crescent, Cupar, admitted intentionally making sexual communications to a girl under the age of 13 with the intention of obtaining sexual gratification.
The court heard how he secretly enticed the girl to chat to him online during a meeting with her father.
Depute fiscal Beverly Adam told the court McLaren ran his own mobile DJ business.
She said McLaren initially approached the girl at a wedding he had been asked to play at and told her: “We need to stay in contact.”
Later, the girl accompanied her father to meet McLaren to pay him for his DJ services at the wedding and, while her father was distracted, McLaren slipped her a piece of scrap paper with his Skype username on it.
She asked why it was in the name “Iain Martin” and he told her it was because he did not want anyone to know his real name.
The girl eventually contacted McLaren, a former branch support officer for RAF Leuchars and Queen’s Birthday Honours 2012 recipient, and began to ask her a series of inappropriate questions.
Ms Adam said: “He initially asked ‘How was school?’ before adding ‘What were you wearing? Were you wearing a skirt? Were you naughty at school today?’”
The messages were thereafter discovered by the girl’s shocked mother on her iPad, and she immediately contacted the police.
When interviewed by officers, McLaren admitted his behaviour had been inappropriate and that he was fully aware the girl was 10 years old.
Defence solicitor David Bell said: “There’s little that can be said in mitigation.
“The content of the communications was not sexually explicit but there was obviously a sexual element to this and heis aware a custodial sentence is apossibility.”
Sheriff Charles Macnair QC deferred sentence until May 1 for a criminal justice report and a psychological assessment and placed McLaren on the sex offenders register in the meantime.
cwilson@thecourier.co.uk