A “deviant” Highland diving instructor who tried to recruit a 14-year-old babysitter to meet him in a hotel, stand in goo and rub her sweaty feet on his face, has been spared jail.
Michael Bramham, 44, was caught after police targeting child abuse placed an advert on Gumtree purporting to be from a schoolgirl offering babysitting services.
A woman cop posing as the girl was then contacted by Bramham.
During an “extensive” online conversation, the father-of-one asked her if she was interested in “a modelling job”, offering to pay her £100.
Prosecutor Cheryl Clark said: “He repeatedly asked her to send him photographs of herself.
“He went into details about what he would want to do with her feet.”
Bramham, who worked in Achiltibuie, near Ullapool, promised a photoshoot and suggested they could meet on a weekday after school.
He said: “You’ll be barefoot and bare-legged and getting gunge poured on the soles of your feet, standing in buckets of gunge, and sat on a chair using your feet to pick sweets out of basins of goo.”
He said he wanted to photograph her lying face down with her big toes “stuck in lots of goo” and with “stuff being poured or spread on the soles of your feet”.
He also wanted some shots of her “standing in stuff”.
‘Can you curl your toes up really tight?’
He suggested, “We’ll do a pic tonight and I’ll figure out how to get £10 to you. Just want to see what you look like and if your feet are OK.”
He said he would “get a placed booked” and wanted to do the shoot before the end of February 2020.
He emailed: “Assume you’ll be coming straight from school. What do you normally wear? When are you 15? Not important, just curious.”
He told her to delete their emails so her mother wouldn’t see them.
Bramham then made several requests to photograph her bare feet and told her he had booked an apartment at a hotel in Newcastle and he would be there from 12 onwards.
Ms Clark said: “He made reference to her doing ‘extra bits for money’.
“This would involve him smelling her feet and placing his nose between her toes and her rubbing her sweaty feet in her face.”
Bramham asked: “Can you curl your toes up really tight, like clench them like a fist? Are you any good at picking things up between your toes? Can you do a thumbs up with your big toe, like curl your toes up but stick your big toes up?”
He said: “Will pay £160 as well as the gunge shoot if I can smell your bare feet for half an hour, face pressed into your soles and nose between your toes and you rub them in my face for a bit.
“If they’re sweaty that’s better. If you’ve had PE at school don’t wear socks under your trainers and bunk off straight after without changing your shoes.”
The communications were traced to Bramham’s home in Denny, Stirlingshire, and at 8am on June 10 2020 the property was visited by officers with a warrant.
Bramham’s then-wife was there but he was away working and was arrested at 4.30pm that day on a sea pier at Achiltibuie.
He remarked to police: “I had a feeling the person I was speaking to wasn’t real.”
‘Obviously criminal behaviour’
Defence solicitor Gary McAteer said a psychologist had examined Braham for “having a fetishism” and found he did not have one.
He said Bramham had been “treated as a pariah” in the immediate aftermath of his crime becoming known, but he was now working as a commercial diver again.
Mr McAteer said: “Men are men, they go out in boats. He received very significant online threats, but he’s since come back to work. It’s been a bit rough, but it’s settled.”
Sheriff Simon Collins QC placed Bramham – a commercial scuba diver, PADI assistant instructor and first aid instructor – under social work supervision and on the sex offenders’ register, for two years. He also imposed restrictions on the way he can access the internet.
He said: “It’s certainly very odd behaviour – odd as in deviant – and obviously criminal behaviour.”
He warned him: “This will be an alternative to a custodial sentence – if you breach this order you’re likely to be sent to prison.”
