A music teacher who groomed a 13-year-old schoolgirl and met her after promising to give her a guitar has been sent to prison.
Angus Laughland, 62, was jailed for 220 days after the girl’s grandmother discovered his grooming and compared it to what she had seen on the TV show Paedophile Hunters.
Laughland – who did not know the girl – started exchanging text messages with her after getting hold of her number by chance through a third party.
Shortly after he started sending her texts he guessed she was around “13 or 14” and the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, confirmed that she was.
Perth Sheriff Court was told that in one of the first texts received by the girl, Laughland said: “I’m not a person as such, just call me cyber buddy.”
He sent mundane messages for a number of days which led to the girl getting into regular post-school text conversations.
However, the messages he sent quickly became sexually explicit.
The girl told Laughland about her interests including music and he revealed that he “played guitar and smoked”.
She then took a call in which no-one spoke but a guitar was heard playing in the background.
On 11 October he sent a message saying he taught guitar and that he wanted to meet her to give her a guitar as a gift.
The meeting took place in Blairgowrie the following day.
When the girl got home, her mother quizzed her about the guitar and they discussed the issue with the girl’s grandmother.
“She showed her mother the guitar and she raised concern,” the court heard. “When she described the circumstances of the ‘gift’ her grandmother suggested it sounded like a TV programme she watched called Paedophile Hunters.
“They played the programme on the computer and were shocked by how similar it was. The police were contacted.”
Laughland, Myrtle Park, Blairgowrie, admitted sending explicit texts to a 13-year-old girl between 16 September and 12 October 2014.
Solicitor Paul Ralph, defending, said: “It started as a grave error of judgment. It developed so far beyond that that it’s very difficult for us to really describe how he got himself into that situation.”
Sheriff Fiona Tait said: “We ought not to lose sight of what this offence was. He described sexual intercourse in detail and also met the child. The difficulty he faces is the gravity of the offence.
“He met the child and gave her the guitar. That shows precisely how vulnerable she was. The most concerning text had been sent and the girl was too afraid to do anything about it. Then he met her.”