Pupil sex chat tutor on sex offender list
Maths teacher invited girl, 15, to hotel room
A HIGH school teacher who sent a 15-year-old girl sexual Snapchat messages and tried to entice her to go to a hotel with him has avoided a jail sentence.
James Connal, 31, then a maths teacher, groomed the girl while giving her private tuition at her home. She was not a pupil at the school he taught at, and he had been given her phone number so lessons could be arranged. A jury at Falkirk Sheriff Court heard his contacts with the girl “started out innocently enough but within a couple of weeks had developed into something that was anything but innocent”. Connal began to text her throughout the day, including during school hours, telling her she was “pretty”, that he “looked forward to seeing her”, and then asked her to go away with him and stay in a hotel in Edinburgh with him. He added her on Snapchat and sent her toplesss selfies, and others of himself with his hand down his trousers. He texted to ask if he could put his hand down her top. She said in evidence he had tried to kiss her on two occasions when he turned up for maths lessons, and he had also told her to delete some of the messages he had sent.
Connal tutored the girl, now 18, for about two months from the start of October 2021, when her mum spotted some of what Connal had been sending.
A lesson set for that day was cancelled and police were called in.
The seedy pics showed some had been taken in his classroom at Larbert High School, near Falkirk, and showed his “distinctive tattoos”.
At a two-day trial in January, Connal, of Hallglen, Falkirk, denied a charge of indecent communication and causing the girl to look at sexual images.
He did not give evidence but entered a special defence of incrimination that suggested the photos and messages had been sent by another, unspecified person.
Prosecutor Jamie Hilland told jurors: “Use your common sense. The ragingly clear conclusion is that they were sent by Mr Connal.”
Referring to Connal’s suggestion to the girl about going with him to an Edinburgh hotel, Mr Hilland said: “The implication of that is pretty clear.”
The jury took less than 15 minutes to find Connal guilty by majority.
Yesterday, Sheriff Christopher Shead sentenced him to 250 hours unpaid work and placed him on a restriction of liberty order for six months.
He also put him on the sex offenders register for three years.
the implication of the hotel invite is pretty clear
PROSECUTOR ADDRESSES JURY