A lecturer found guilty of sending a series of indecent Snapchat messages to two former students has been locked up.
Lewis Bryan, 29, also tried to blackmail one of the men by saying he wouldn’t submit his coursework to the SQA unless he sent him indecent material.
The creep committed the offences while he taught the men – who were teenage school pupils at the time – at Dundee and Angus College’s Arbroath campus.
Bryan was sentenced to 27 months in prison at Dundee Sheriff Court and was placed on the sex offender’s register for a decade.
As he was led away to the cells, Bryan said: “I didn’t do it.”
A jury found Bryan, who was working as a chef prior to being jailed, guilty by a majority verdict of two charges of coercing the men to look at sexual images and one charge of attempted extortion between January 2017 and March 2018.
The court heard one of the men felt “traumatised” by Bryan’s conduct.
Jurors were also shown a screenshot selfie of Bryan with the caption “send nudes (obviously)” which one of the victims said Bryan sent to him while he was teaching.
One of the victims said previously that Bryan, of Beechwood Road, Arbroath, sent lewd images with a partner, using emojis to cover his genitals.
The ex-pupil revealed he was able to identify Bryan in some photos by tattoos on his body from American television series Twin Peaks and video game BioShock that he had shown students in class.
Bryan returned to the dock following the preparation of social work reports.
Defence solicitor Paul Parker-Smith said that Bryan continued to strenuously deny his guilt, despite being convicted by the jury.
Mr Parker-Smith urged Sheriff Alastair Carmichael to impose a community-payback order on Bryan.
However, Sheriff Carmichael ruled that only a jail term was appropriate due to the nature and gravity of the offences.
He said: “The jury convicted you of these offences, I appreciate your position is different from their position.
“These are serious offences, there’s a sexual element to them. In my view, these charges are so serious that there’s no option but to impose a custodial sentence.”
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