A volunteer at a children’s charity shop is on the sex offenders register after admitting sending sexual messages to a 14-year-old girl.
James Sinclair (25) described himself as the girl’s ”boyfriend” and carried on a non-sexual relationship with the girl against her family’s wishes.
He gave the girl a mobile phone in the hope of keeping their contact a secret and saved his number into the phone under an assumed alias.
Sinclair used that ”cover” to send her a series of indecent text messages describing a variety of sexual acts that he intended to perform on her.
The 14-year-old’s family were aware of his ploy and in February discovered a number of ”filthy and disgusting” messages on the phone, sent under the name Harry X.
The complainer’s family contacted police to report the matter and officers thereafter examined her mobile phone before tracing and detaining the sender of the messages.
Depute fiscal Carol Whyte told Perth Sheriff Court: ”The complainer’s family were particularly disgusted due to the accused being a 25-year-old adult and she still just a child.
”They had for some time tried to stop the complainer from having any contact with the accused but these efforts had proved to be unsuccessful.”
A search of Sinclair’s phone by officers did not reveal copies of the texts alleged to have been sent by him, but it did show there had been contact between the accused and complainer.
Sinclair of Dunkeld Road, Perth, admitted sending indecent text messages to a 14-year-old girl on dates between February 16 and 23 this year, describing sexual acts.
Sheriff McCreadie placed him on the register and deferred sentence until November 2, to enable the court to obtain a report from social workers.