A telephone engineer posted a naked picture of a woman on Facebook because he wanted to get back at her for ignoring him, a court has heard.
Gavin Thompson appeared at Aberdeen Sheriff Court yesterday and admitted sending the message on November 7 last year when he knew it was “grossly offensive” and “of an indecent nature”.
The court heard the 30-year-old had been seeing the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, when she suddenly stopped talking to him.
Fiscal depute Karen Dow said Thompson had been trying to contact the woman through text messages and Facebook. However, she would not respond.
On October 19 the woman received a private message from Thompson on the social networking site which threatened to put explicit photos of her online if she did not respond to him.
Ms Dow said on the date of the offence the woman logged into her account to find she had been “tagged” in a picture which showed her naked from the waist up.
Attached to the picture was a message written by Thompson which stated that as she “completely refused to acknowledge he existed”, he felt it was “time to get his own back” by posting the picture.
Ms Dow said the woman later spoke to Thompson who explained he had set up the image so it could only be viewed by him and her.
Representing Thompson, of 9 Union Glen Court, Aberdeen, solicitor Charles Benzies said it was an act of “crass stupidity” by his client who had never been in any sort of trouble before.
He said Thompson only sent the message from a horse steading in Milltimber “to try to get her attention”.
Mr Benzies said his client was extremely sorry and that he wanted to apologise for his behaviour publicly to the court.
Sheriff Christopher Shead said he was concerned that the act had been intended so that others viewing the woman’s Facebook page would have been able to see the image.
Mr Benzies insisted it was only meant to “scare her” and that Thompson had never wanted anyone else to see it.
Mr Benzies acknowledged that the woman would not have known this at first, however, which would have resulted in a great deal of concern to her.
Sheriff Shead described it as a “nasty offence” and deferred sentence on Thompson for six months to allow him to be of good behaviour.