Paedophile filmed himself raping three-year-old boy

A child rapist who filmed his horrifying abuse of victims and made videos of it for others to watch has been jailed for 10 years.

Robert Mcgregor, 36, preyed on youngsters, one as young as three, whom he groomed and exploited for 13 years.

The delivery driver was caught with a cache of child pornography which led police to identify three victims he had sexually assaulted.

Advocate depute Jo Mcdonald said a search warrant was granted after intelligence was received from the National Online Child Abuse Prevention Agency. The child abuser’s home at Friars Street, in Inverness, was raided in May last year and laptops and other items were seized for analysis.

More than 2,000 indecent photos and 899 videos were recovered many of which were found to contain material at the most extreme level of abuse. His sex assaults on children spanned more than a decade between 2001 and 2014 and all the attacks occurred in the Inverness area.

The child pornography offences took place between 2011 and March last year.

His youngest victim was aged just three. Another boy was subjected to nearly a decade of abuse from the age of six and a third child was 12 when Mcgregor assaulted him.

Judge Lady Carmichael said that the material recovered in the case not only demonstrated what he had done but that he had persisted in it despite the obvious distress of victims.

She told Mcgregor: “Your sexual offending is of the most serious and appalling nature.”

Lady Carmichael pointed out that the predator had formed relationships with families in order to gain access to children who he then subjected to abuse.

Lady Carmichael told Mcgregor that she would have jailed him for 15 years but for his early guilty pleas to the catalogue of offences.

The judge also ordered that he be kept under supervision for a further five years on his release.

One man branded Mcgregor an “animal” as he was led off to start his sentence.

Detective Inspector Mark Lambley, of the National Child Abuse Investigation Unit said:“robert Mcgregor preyed on young children and abused the trust of the families involved through his abhorrent and unforgivable offending.

“A case this harrowing is rarely seen in Scotland and will understandably send shockwaves through our local communities.”