An Elgin man snared by paedophile hunters posing as 13-year-old girls online is behind bars today.
A trial had previously heard how Ailean Kerr sent explicit images to the decoy profiles and asked one intimate questions about her development.
Jailing the paedophile for 15 months, Sheriff Ian Cruickshank told Kerr: “It is essential that children are protected from predators online.”
Kerr appeared at the hearing having previously been found guilty by a jury of two charges of attempting to cause an older child to view sexual images and attempting to communicate indecently with an older child between November 2020 and January 2021.
During his trial, operators of the decoy profiles took to the witness box to detail how Kerr had contacted them on the dating app Mingle.
The profiles used photos of themselves altered with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to make them appear child-like.
The decoys told Kerr they were only 13 soon after he made contact with them.
Man called ‘children’ sexy
In evidence led by fiscal depute Emily Hood the women, members of a volunteer group calling themselves Shatter the Silence, said Kerr had called them “sexy”.
He asked one: “Do you like d***s then?” and questioned her on intimate details of her development.
After being told that one of the “girls” was in Edinburgh, Kerr made references to travelling to meet her, stating: “To see you naked, definitely worth the trip.”
The decoy operators took screenshots of the conversations, which they then passed to police.
When questioned, Kerr admitted sending the messages and images – some of which subsequent investigations found stored on his devices, but denied it was sexually motivated.
During the trial Kerr told the court he did not believe the profiles were being operated by real children and claimed he had been conducting an “investigation”.
He said he contacted the decoys because he suspected they were “scammers”.
He said pictures of children on a site that required users to be over 18 coupled with discrepancies between their listed locations and how they displayed in-app were “red flags” that had caught his interest.
‘They weren’t who they said they were’
“That proves that they weren’t who they said they were. That’s what gave me the start to investigate,” he told the court.
“You check everything. You accept nothing – that’s what I was doing,” he added.
But a jury took under two hours to reject this version of events, unanimously finding Kerr guilty of both charges.
At the sentencing hearing defence counsel Bill Adam, for Kerr, said a presentencing report had assessed his client as being at low risk of reoffending and asked Sheriff Cruickshank to consider a community-based punishment.
But Sheriff Cruickshank noted that the author of the report had accepted Kerr’s denial that his crimes were sexually motivated – in opposition to the jury’s conviction.
He said: “The jury convicted you on two charges that related to the fact that between 13 November 2020 and 31 January 21 you communicated with individuals and the purpose of that was to obtain sexual gratification.
“The jury convicted you on the basis that you were communicating with individuals that you believed to be children.
A ‘pathetic’ defence
“During the course of the trial you tried to advance a defence – that was quite frankly pathetic – that you well knew that the children were adults.”
Sheriff Cruickshank said that by maintaining this position during the preparation of reports Kerr had not shown that he had accepted responsibility.
He continued: “I will be sentencing you on the basis of the charges that were found proved.”
He noted that Kerr did attempt to communicate with children and entered into sexual written communications as well as sending images of his own penis.
He stated that this behaviour was “for your sexual gratification” and said: “It is essential that children are protected from predators online.”
He sentenced Kerr of Beechfield Road, Elgin, to 15 months imprisonment and ordered that he remain on the sex offenders register for 10 years.