Teenager is fined £1,000 after sharing intimate images online

A teenager who shared intimate images of young women has been fined £1,000.

Alastair Ferguson, of Reres Road, Dundee, shared the images to a storage application from a computer at Dundee and Angus College’s Kingsway campus on March 12.

Ferguson, 19, pled guilty to causing the women fear and alarm.

Sheriff Derek Reekie ruled there was not a substantial sexual element to Ferguson’s actions after it was revealed the images he shared were already publicly available.

Dundee Sheriff Court heard Ferguson, an apprentice with a local firm, had shared the images with two friends via WhatsApp after initially seeing a link on Twitter.

Some of the victims said they felt suicidal after discovering what had happened. Police received 16 calls from people not known to Ferguson about intimate photographs and videos being uploaded.

Depute fiscal Jenna Grattan said previously: “Photos had been viewed by people unknown to the complainers, causing them extreme distress.

“The pictures had been shared by the complainers with their partners and were not publicly available.”

The court heard one of the files was entitled “Dundee” and contained images of 29 females.

Ferguson told police: “I looked but I didn’t do anything else with them. I saw it on Twitter and downloaded all the images to my phone but I didn’t do anything else with them.”

The court heard information provided by the police said Ferguson was not the only person to have distributed the images.

Officers, however, have been unable to source their origin.