Sex offender escapes further punishment after breach

A Tayside sex offender jailed after being snared by paedophile hunters in Newcastle has avoided further punishment in an Angus court for breaching a community order by travelling to the city.

Ronald Young, from Montrose, sent explicit messages involving bestiality to what he thought was a 13-year-old girl he befriended online before making the 200-mile journey to Tyneside to meet her.

But the 63-year-old, who claimed on the chat site he was just 18 and called himself ‘sportsteacher’, had been tricked by vigilantes known as Dark Justice who were waiting at Newcastle’s Central Station when he arrived.

The two-man Dark Justice team held on to Young until he could be arrested and handed a dossier of his activities to police.

In January, Young, a former Dundee bus driver, was jailed for two years and three months, and placed on the sex offenders register for life. But he appeared back in the dock at Forfar Sheriff Court to admit a breach of a three-year community payback order imposed in January 2014 over the possession of indecent material.

Defence solicitor Billy Rennie said the order was almost at an end but had been breached by Young travelling on public transport to Newcastle without the prior approval of his supervising officer.

Sheriff Pino Di Emidio told Young, previously of Westwood Walk: “You have admitted this breach and that conduct has now constituted what caused you to be sentenced. I will take no further action over this but you should be clear that should you at any further time find yourself subject to an order, then any breaches would be dealt with very severely.”