A serial offender, who used a TV documentary to complain of “toxic masculinity” in Perth Prison, has admitted creeping into an Auchterarder family’s home while carrying a knife.
A pre-school child and a months-old baby were in the property when David Cheers Gray walked in, uninvited, on New Years Day.
The 29-year-old apologised and fled, Perth Sheriff Court heard.
A sheriff said the incident would have been “truly terrifying” for the family-of-five.
Gray admitted behaving in a threatening or abusive manner and having an offensive weapon at the house in Auchterarder’s The Grove.
He also pled guilty to a separate charge of having an obscene child abuse image on his phone.
PlayStation robbery
Gray was interviewed for a BBC Disclosure documentary while he was on remand at HMP Perth, awaiting matters coming to court.
He said prison bosses did not have the “manpower” to deal with a high density of inmates with mental health issues.
After pleading guilty to a variety of offences, Gray appeared in court this week via video link from the jail for sentencing.
He had also threatened a man with violence in his own home in Auchterarder on October 8 2023 and robbed him of a games console.
Later that month, he acted aggressively in the street while brandishing a glass bottle and he admitted five charges of shoplifting drink and crisps from the town’s Co-op.
Sheriff Jennifer Bain KC jailed him for 23 months and placed him on the sex offenders register for seven years.
The jail time was backdated to January when he was taken into custody, meaning he will be released soon.
Once freed, Gray, from Auchterarder, will be supervised for eight months “to protect the public from serious harm”.
Sheriff Bain said she took into account of his “extensive history of substance misuse and enduring mental health issues, related to trauma from childhood” and said he appeared to be using his time in custody “to positive effect”.
But she said: “Not only did you enter the complainer’s home, but you entered the bedroom while he was asleep.
“You then aggressively threatened him with violence and robbed him of a PlayStation.
“This would have been a frightening ordeal.”
The sheriff continued: “Some months later, you entered a family home in the evening when five members of the family were present, including a four-year-old child and a baby.
“For a family to have anyone enter their home without permission would have been an ordeal.
“But for you to do so while in possession of a knife, it must have been truly terrifying.”
Of the single child abuse image, the sheriff said: “You have no previous offending of this nature and your motivation did not appear to be sexual.
“However, as you well know, by viewing and screenshotting this awful image – for sharing or for whatever reason – it is behaviour that results in an online market for such images and consequently child abuse of this nature continues.”
Toxic masculinity
Solicitor David Holmes, defending, said: “There has been a definite change in his overall perspective since he has been on remand.
“He is trying to resolve a number of personal issues.”
For the BBC’ Disclosure: Prisons on the Brink programme, Gray was interviewed in his cell at HMP Perth.
He said overcrowding and mental health issues were a bad combination.
“They just don’t have the numbers or manpower to deal with the scale of the problem in here,” he said.
“Another part of it as well is toxic masculinity where men, especially the kind of men in here, don’t want to talk about their problems.”
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