BEAST: I’M RUINED
Tutor avoids jail over vile online child sex chats
A TUTORING firm boss who chatted about child sex online has “lost everything”, a court heard yesterday.
Former banker Philip Bruce Dewar, 35 – who was convicted at an earlier hearing of exchanging obscene messages – was spared a prison sentence.
But Sheriff Derek Livingston warned him he would be sent to jail if he breached his community payback order.
The order imposes strict internet use restrictions, forbids him unsupervised contact with under-16s and requires that he attend treatment sessions as well as doing 250 hours of unpaid work.
Falkirk Sheriff Court heard police acting on a tip-off found messages on Bruce-Dewar’s phone.
In one chat, he was questioned by a contact using the name “Mr Awesome” about a five-year-old boy. When asked: “Are you going to try anything with him?”, he responded: “Hmmm, time will tell.”
Defence lawyer Mark Harrower said Bruce-Dewar, who is gay, had been “exchanging banter of a disturbing kind” while trying to pick up another adult male for sex.
He said: “The consequences for him have been dire.”
The court heard Bruce-Dewar, whose firm, Tuition Scotland, tutor children from upper primary age, has lost his job and his adopted child had been taken into care.
Sheriff Livingston said: “‘Time will tell’ is not an acceptable answer when someone is asked if they’d have sex with a five-year-old child.
“He didn’t say, ‘I’m totally insulted’ and shut the conversation down. I think these comments are menacing to children.”