Sex offender avoids jail at Inverness court as sheriff admits: ‘Prison rehab wouldn’t work’

A 55-year-old man avoided a jail sentence after downloading and distributing videos of children under five years of age being sexually abused and sending sexualised messages to “girls” he thought were young teenagers.

But Inverness Sheriff Court was told that Anthony Williams was actually communicating with a member of a paedophile hunter group and another adult woman. This eventually led to his arrest.

Williams, who previously lived in Kenneth Street, Inverness, but is understood to be now living in Drumnadrochit, also sent photographs of himself, gave his date of birth and sent a video of himself performing a sex act. When his internet equipment was examined, the horrific videos were discovered.

His lawyer, solicitor advocate Shahid Latif, said: “It was forensic suicide. This was 44 days of madness. The offences were unsophisticated and it was only a matter of time before he was caught. And he was.”

Sheriff Eilidh Macdonald decided against jailing Williams, although she expressed her disgust at his actions.

She told Williams: “The sad reality is that if I send you to prison, it won’t be for long enough for you to be rehabilitated.”

The sheriff said she would impose restrictions on Williams’ life to try and ensure there was no repeat.

She placed him under three years social work supervision, on the Sex Offenders’ Register for the same period and instructed him to participate in a sex offenders’ rehabilitation programme.

Williams must also allow police or social workers to check any internet-enabled device he owns at any time and not to delete any web history of sites he visits.

Sheriff Macdonald added: “You derived sexual pleasure from communicating with children. It does not matter that they were not, but it is also fortunate.

“You also had graphic images of children under the age of five being abused in the most painful way and it is unfathomable that anyone can derive sexual pleasure from this.”

Last month at Inverness Sheriff Court, Williams admitted sex offences of causing a person pretending to be a child to engage in sexual communication, attempting to cause an older child to look at sexual images and communicating indecently.

He also pleaded guilty to downloading and distributing indecent images of children at a house in Chattan Avenue, Inverness between September and October 2019.

The court was told that a volunteer member of a paedophile hunter group posed as a 12-year-old girl on social media and was communicating with Williams. He was also sexually communicating with a woman posing as a 13-year-old girl.