A convicted paedophile who threatened legal action against The Press and Journal because we covered his case has been jailed for 15 months.
Roy Howe was caught with graphic images of children being abused, one of whom was under two years of age.
Inverness Sheriff Court was told Howe continued to source photographs of children being abused for as long as six months after he was placed on a community payback order for committing a similar offence.
Since we first reported on Howe’s latest offending, the 36-year-old has written a series of emails to this newspaper threatening to sue us and demanding an apology.
He insisted he did not plead guilty to the offence, said the evidence presented by police and prosecutors was “lies” and branded the case against him “a miscarriage of justice”.
Howe pled guilty last month and sentence was deferred for background reports.
‘He has expressed a wish to change’
At his sentencing hearing yesterday, it emerged that one of those reports described Howe as a “paedophile”.
Sheriff Frazer told him: “Despite being on a community payback order, this has not had the desired effect.
“You have continued in defiance of the previous order by viewing images of children, some under the age of two.
“You are described in the report as a paedophile, which is a strong description of you. There is no alternative to a custodial sentence.”
Howe previously pleaded guilty to possessing the obscene material between January 2019 and September 28 2023.
A total of 239 images were found after police officers carried out a routine inspection at Howe’s home in Inverness.
His solicitor, Natalie Paterson, tried to persuade the sheriff not to jail her client.
She told him: “He has expressed a wish to change. He has a job offer in forestry and has no other matters outstanding.
“He has also completed the unpaid hours of community work imposed by the previous community payback order so there are 300 hours available to the court.”
‘Custody is uppermost in my mind’
But Sheriff Frazer responded: “The real difference here is he has a previous conviction in March 2023 when he was put on a CPO and on the Moving Forward to Change programme for sex offenders.
“Then there is a six-month period after he was put on that order when he committed analogous offending. Custody is uppermost in my mind.”
Fiscal depute Susan Love said that Howe was “subject to device inspections due to his previous offending” and devices seen in his property were seized for analysis.
The pictures – all of which were inaccessible to any other user as they had been deleted – showed girls aged five to seven “dressed in adult lingerie”.
As the officers were leaving Howe’s address they noticed other devices and a warrant was subsequently granted and the property searched.
Ten of the images were Category A – the most serious – 14 Category B and the remainder in Category C.
As well as jailing him for 15 months, Sheriff Frazer also placed Howe on the Sex Offender’s Register for 10 years.