School worker preyed on boys across internet

Published 14 Jul 2010 11:48

A CLACKMANNANSHIRE school support worker has admitted tricking over 90 youngsters into posing naked and sending imagesof themselves across the internet.

Brian Syme targeted boys aged between 12 and 21, including pupils he taught, and befriended them on social networking sites claiming to be a teenage girl.

The qualified teacher, who had been trained in the sexual exploitation of children, would chat to them for a while before sending naked pictures of a teenage girl.

He then asked the boys to send him naked pictures of themselves and encouraged them to perform sex acts using a webcam from his home in Alloa.

The 32-year-old also had a file named 'locals' stored on a pen drive which contained images of boys he had targeted in his local area.

Syme, formerly of Sauchie was eventually caught during a Central Police investigation.

At the High Court in Glasgow on Monday, he admitted a string a sex offences, including using lewd and indecent behaviour towards youngsters and possessing indecent images of children, between January 2006 and December last year.

Prosecutor Gillian Wade told the court that police raided Syme's home in December last year.

Officers found a sickening stash of 283 indecent photos of children and 107 indecent videos.

Miss Wade said, "The accused confirmed that he had set up fake profiles on his BEBO pages in the names of Niki D and Beth J.

"On the fake profiles he portrayed himself as 16 to 18 year old Scottish females and adopted their character and persona allowing him to engage and chat to teenage boys under false pretences."

Syme told officers that he targeted boys aged between 14 and 20 and would chat to them using MSN after befriending them on BEBO.

Miss Wade told the court that the chat quickly became "sexualised" and he enticed the boys to send naked photos of themselves and carry out sex acts on their webcams.

He would then record the footage without the boys' knowledge and store it on a pen drive.

In one sickening game, he forced a boy to roll a die to see what sex act he should perform and asked him to dress up in his sister's clothing.

Another youngster was also told to hold up a sign saying that he was a slave while he was naked.

He also regularly showed boys a list of the youngsters he had pictures of and many recognised the names on the list as their friends.

On one occasion he showed a boy indecent photos of another teen that he knew.

The pervert also regularly visited the home of a 13-year-old victim because he knew the boy's mum and regularly went for dinner with them.

Miss Wade said, "The indecent images were sent freely by the complainers who all thought they were communicating with a young female."

Miss Wade added that a number of the boys targeted by Syme had been taught by him and were "sickened and disgusted" when they found out it was him and not a girl they had been chatting to.

Miss Wade said, "One boy said that he felt very angry that he was attending school where the accused saw him every day and acted normally.

"The accused admitted that this was a huge breach of trust."

During his police interview Syme told officers that he did not have a sexual interest in children and had done it out of curiosity.

Miss Wade added, "He said that he knew what he was doing was wrong and kept planning to stop but never quite managed it.

"He related it to being like a smoking addiction."

Judge Lady Stacey deferred sentence until next month for background reports and Syme was placed on the sex offenders register and remanded in custody.

Tweet

Return to the main index, get more from this section or browse our News archives.

Follow @alloatiser