An RAF Leuchars serviceman enticed underage girls to strip off for him online as they were doing their homework, a court heard.
Chesney Wallbank was ordered to carry out 150 hours of unpaid work when he appeared at Dundee Sheriff Court on Thursday. He was also placed under a year’s supervision. The community payback order was reduced from 200 hours in recognition of the 23-year-old’s guilty plea at an earlier hearing.
He had previously admitted taking or permitting to be taken or making indecent photographs or pseudo- photographs of children at RAF Leuchars between April 21 2011 and June 5 2013.
An earlier court heard that Wallbank faced the prospect of dismissal from the armed forces after indecent images were found on his laptop during an internal investigation sparked by allegations he had faked documents to allow him to be involved in training teenage cadets.
Depute fiscal Vicki Bell told the court that the accused’s room had been searched as part of the internal inquiry, his laptop was seized and indecent images were revealed during the subsequent examination.
Ms Bell told the earlier court: “The images were found within a temporary storage area used by Windows Live Messenger.
“Chat logs were recovered and show the accused asking for ‘pics’ and asking for ‘pics of young girls 12-13’.
“He also asked an unknown person to do their homework naked whilst streaming through a webcam to him and during these chats there appeared to be trading of images. A total of 10 indecent images were found.
“There are comments in the chat logs from girls saying ‘I’m only 14’, ‘I don’t want to do that’ and one actually says ‘f*** off’.
Sheriff Alastair Brown told Ms Bell: “Good for her.”
The court had heard that all 10 images were Category C, which are graded as indecent, but not depicting sexual activity.
The court heard that RAF forensics did not examine Wallbank’s computer for nine months as “it was low priority”.