A man who targeted underage girls using an online chat site has been jailed for 10 months at Perth Sheriff Court.
Daniel Titley (20), from Telford in Shropshire, wept in the dock as Sheriff Robert McCreadie labelled his actions ”disgusting” and ordered he be placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years.
The court heard that Titley, a father-of-one, pretended to be a friend of one of the three young girls to make initial contact on MSN Messenger.
He was soon sending the friends, all from Perthshire, sexually-explicit requests and exposed himself to one using a webcam, before performing a sex act.
At an earlier appearance (link) he admitted three charges of behaving in a lewd, indecent and libidinous manner towards the girls all then aged under 16 between June 1 and September 1 2010, but sentence was deferred for background reports.
At that time depute fiscal Alan Kempton said Titley had been fully aware of the girls’ ages and revealed that when told by one she was just 13, he replied: ”Wow, that’s young.”
The episode came to an end when teachers discovered what was happening and called the police. Forensic analysis was carried out on the telephones and computers owned by Titley and the complainers and he was subsequently arrested at the home he shared with his mother and stepfather.
Solicitor Cheryl Clarke, acting for Titley, said: ”His position regarding these offences is that he has been inherently stupid. He expressed that part of the reason matters carried on was because of a degree of flattery.”
However, the sheriff refused to accept any explanation, saying: ”You knowingly preyed on these young girls to gratify your own needs. The nature and content of these messages was disgusting and may have an effect on your victims’ future development.”
He added: ”Given the awful nature of this offence I can only deal with it by means of a custodial sentence.”
He sentenced Titley to 10 months’ imprisonment, following which he will undertake a five-year period on licence.
He also placed Titley on the sex offenders register for a decade, and ordered he be made subject to a five-year sexual offences prevention order, which will prohibit him from having any unsupervised contact with anyone under the age of 18, prevent him from working with anyone under the age of 18, ban him from entering online chat rooms, using any similar messaging service or a webcam, require him to allow police access to any computerised devices and prevent him from contacting the complainers.