A children’s author who claimed to be a “sex teacher” online is facing jail after targeting people he thought were children.
Brian Cairney, 58, offered to explain sexual techniques, urging: “Do as teacher tells you.”
Cairney – author of the “Bunny Lucas & Harley Hare” books – contacted females as he travelled round Scotland, staying in hotel rooms for his day job as a solar panels salesman.
Two of the contacts he made on singles website Mingle were vigilante group decoys posing as schoolgirls.
He asked the first: “Are you a naughty girl?”
When she replied, “I’m 12. I’m not naughty” he replied, “12, and you’re on an adult site, that deserves a spanking.”
When she told him she was supposed to be doing schoolwork, he made a sexually explicit comment.
She then asked, “Are you a teacher?” and Cairney replied, “Yes. A sex teacher.”
Sexual messages
Prosecutor Cheryl Clark said the decoy emphasised she was 12 but Cairney continued to send her sexual messages.
As the conversation moved on, he suddenly messaged: “You really are 12 aren’t you? I thought you were having a fantasy” and told her to delete all their exchanges and to stay off adult sites.
Less than three months later however, he contacted another decoy who was posing on Mingle with the profile picture of a 13-year-old girl, though stating she was 19.
When Cairney contacted her, she replied she was 14, and Cairney replied, “14, wow, this is for 18s, this is a dating site where adults like to talk naughty.”
Cairney continued to send her sexual messages.
He told her that when she was 18 he would send her a picture of a man and woman having sex, adding “I can’t show you anything like that, I’d go to the jail.”
Arrested after being lured to house
Last October, a decoy used a solar panels enquiry to entice Cairney to an address in Whitburn, West Lothian and he was arrested after he was identified from his Mingle picture.
He said: “I thought I was speaking to an adult.
“If it had been a real child I wouldn’t have done it.”
He became “visibly upset” during a police interview, and said: “I thought it was an adult. I have children of my own.”
Ms Clark said the decoys involved aimed to “proactively identify people online seeking children for sexual gratification”.
At Falkirk Sheriff Court, Cairney, of Bexhill, Sussex, pled guilty to two charges of causing a person pretending to be a child to receive sexual communication, repeatedly sending them sexual messages.
The offences were committed between June 19 and September 23, 2020 in Stirling, and Alexandria, Dunbartonshire.
At the time Cairney was staying in hotels in Dumfries, and also in Yorkshire.
Lynn Swan, defending, said she would reserve mitigation until the sentencing hearing on January 12.
Reports were ordered and Sheriff Simon Collins QC and placed Cairney on the Sex Offenders Register.
Online “reviews”
Cairney’s current book, “Bunny Lucas & Harley Hare – Grace the Rainbow Bird”, was sold by Waterstones and Amazon.
It appeared to be unavailable online from Waterstones on Wednesday but was still on sale on Amazon, despite warnings placed on the website dating back to last year stating “Nonce that writes books for children”, “Please do not buy” and “This man is a beast”.
One lengthy “review” stated, “Once upon a time a bad man called Brian tried to use the internet to find a beautiful princess to marry.
“He thought he’d found one but then a bunch of elves appeared and said the princess was far too young to be getting married so the kings men came and threw Brian in to a dungeon….”
