A man who copied selfies from women's Facebook profiles and posted them onto a kinky website - described by a sheriff "no nice girl would want to be seen on" - was allowed to dodge the Sex Offenders' Register last week.

Ryan Mochrie, 23, accessed the Facebook pages of three females, aged 16 to 20, all strangers to him, and lifted photos that a court was told "they had taken of themselves, or before a night out, with nothing sexual about them".

Mochrie, a carer for his ill dad, then uploaded them to the kinky site where users made lewd remarks about them. One image was manipulated so the woman's face was lifted and imposed on a picture of another women who was engaging in sexual intercourse.

On Friday, Falkirk Sheriff Court was told the Crown did not claim that Mochrie was personally responsible for the manipulation or any of the comments posted.

Samantha Brown, prosecuting, said, however, that Mochrie's actions in moving the innocent images to the lewd site had enabled "other members of the site to add sexually explicit comments and pornographic references".

Miss Brown said none of Mochrie's victims had given consent for their images to be lifted, and were "understandably distressed".

She said a major investigation was launched last year after 18 women and girls from the Falkirk area contacted police to complain that their faces had been uploaded without their permission to the website.

Three pictures were identified as having been posted by someone with the username FalkirkLad. After local publicity, Mochrie walked into Falkirk Police Station and identified himself as "FalkirkLad".

The other images - many of which had been manipulated to make them pornographic - were uploaded by another person, who has not been traced.

Mochrie, formerly of Denny, near Falkirk, now of Kilsyth, pleaded guilty to causing a breach of the peace by posting the images on the site.

His agent, Kevin Douglas, said: "It's the kind of site which guys and girls go on and say things like 'I've done her' or 'she's good at that' - that's the sort of nature of the site.

"I don't want to be seen as ranting against technology, but its a real problem about technology, because if people put a picture onto Facebook, anybody can take it and move it about.

"That's something that as a father I worry about."

He said Mochrie had first become aware the site when a photograph of a girl he had been going out with was placed on it without her permission.

He said: "That's why he thought he'd look at this site, and then he himself was drawn into putting images onto it.

"He's an idiot, and I think he's the first to accept that."

Mochrie had initially been charged with manipulating images to make them pornographic - a more serious offence the Crown now accepts he was not responsible for.

Mr Douglas said that when his client had originally these more serious allegations, he "got the fright of his life", but he accepted he had committed a breach of the peace by enabling others to make lewd comments about the females whose pictures he lifted.

Summary sheriff Derek Livingston ruled that there was no "significant sexual element" to Mochrie's crime - so he does not become a registered sex offender.

He fined Mochrie - who suffers from albinism, is partially-sighted, and receives disability living allowance - £250.

He said: "If there was evidence that Mr Mochrie had been Photoshopping these pictures, then it would be a different matter, but in the circumstances I don't think I can find there's a significant sexual element to this."

He added: "What he's done is taken fairly innocent pictures and lifted them and posted them onto a site that's a good deal less than innocent.

"They were made to appear on a site that no nice girl wants to appear on."

"It's quite bizarre behaviour."

He warned Mochrie, however, that if his actions were repeated, "all sort of questions would be asked".

Mochrie refused to comment as he left court.