A man who threatened a 10-year-old school bully who made his granddaughter feel suicidal has been given an absolute discharge.
The bully told the man’s granddaughter she would “sew up her eyes and mouth and slit her throat,” Dundee Sheriff Court heard.
The young girl had been terrorising her victim over a period of weeks, leading to the child telling her family she wanted to commit suicide.
As a result, the victim’s grandfather went to the school and waited for the bully to come out before approaching her at a bus stop and warning her not to lift a finger to his granddaughter again.
The man, who cannot be named in order to protect the identity of his granddaughter, admitted behaving in a threatening or abusive manner likely to cause fear or alarm.
He admitted shouting and swearing and nudging the child with his arm on March 21 last year in a street in Lochee.
Fiscal depute Laura Bruce told the court the 53-year-old man was seen to approach the girl at a bus stop and shouted at her: “Are you going to slit ****’s neck?
“Don’t raise another finger at my grand-daughter.”
The fiscal said witnesses saw the accused leaning closely to her as he shouted and she was seen to be upset.
“He was nudging her to see that she was listening,” she said.
“His granddaughter had told the family that she couldn’t take it any longer and she wanted to kill herself.”
Solicitor Jim Caird said the accused had an unblemished record but admitted it was a “very poor decision to confront this child about issues that were causing upset to his grandchild”.
“He accepts that was no way to behave and accepts his guilt in this matter,” he said.
Sheriff Alastair Brown told the accused he understood that he had a “protective instinct” towards his granddaughter but added: “I want you to know that I am in no way condoning your approach to that child.
“You acted out of frustration and it’s unfortunately sometimes the case that bullying causes children to become depressed, sometimes to be suicidal and sometimes to carry those suicidal thoughts through.
“If those things were said that was contemptible.”
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