Qualified teacher jailed for internet sex crimes

Published 24 Aug 2010 17:09

A MALE school support worker who persuaded more than 90 boys to send him naked pictures of themselves by posing as teenage girls on the internet was today jailed for four years and eight months.

Brian Syme (32), formerly of Craigbank in Sauchie, targeted boys aged between 12 and 21 - including pupils he taught - and befriended them on social networking sites.

Today, jailing Syme, judge Lady Stacey branded him a danger to children and ordered him to be monitored in the community for four years after his release from prison.

The High Court in Glasgow heard that Syme, a qualified teacher, would chat online to the boys before sending naked pictures of a teenage girl.

He then asked them to send him naked pictures of themselves and encouraged them to perform sex acts using a webcam.

Syme was eventually caught during a Central Police investigation.

Lady Stacey told Syme, "In my view in light of all I have heard and read about this case children must be protected from you.

"What you did over a four-year period was abuse of children and given your position a gross breach of trust."

She ordered that Syme be placed on the sex offenders' register and referred him to the Scottish Ministers as someone unsuitable to work with children.

Syme 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.

His defence counsel Gavin Anderson said, "At no time did he attempt to meet up with any of the boys for inappropriate conduct. In fact he could not have met up with them without disclosing the fact he was not a teenage girl."

He added, "He has made a valuable contribution to society in the past. Those who have employed him have thought highly of him.

"He is someone who requires help as much as punishment. He has already suffered public humiliation and the loss of a career which meant a lot to him, which is a not insignificant punishment.

"There was almost on his part an element of compulsive inability to stop this course of conduct until the authorities stopped it. He accepts what he did was wholly unacceptable."

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