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Daily Record
Daily Record
National
Emylie Howie

Child sex offender jailed for deleting internet search history after watching porn

A child sex predator is back behind bars after breaching the conditions of his Sexual Offences Prevention Order.

Former UK Passport Office employee Robert Gibson, 44, was made the subject of a strict Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) in November 2020.

The order was imposed to protect the public after he was released from prison over a jail term imposed for sending a nude picture to someone he thought was a 12-year-old girl.

On Friday, Gibson, of Mimosa Road, Bridge of Weir, appeared in the dock from custody at Paisley Sheriff Court to admit breaching the terms of his SOPO by deleting his internet browsing history after watching pornography.

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Procurator fiscal depute Dana Barclay told the court: “Gibson was released from prison and made subject to a SOPO.

“One of his conditions prohibits him from deleting internet browser search history, chat logs and text messages.

“On April 11, 2022, PC McPherson received intelligence that Gibson has been searching for sexual content, including pornography, using the search engine Google.

“Police officers attended at his home address and examined his phone.

“It appeared there had been no access to sexual material on the internet history of the phone.

“The phone was seized for further analysis, which detailed that the accused had accessed pornography and sexual content between March 4 and April 10.

“The accused was arrested, had a telephone consultation with his lawyer and made no reply to caution and charge.”

Defence agent Kirsty McGeehan told the court the beast is now unemployed.

Ms McGeehan added: “This is an accelerated diet with Mr Gibson pleading guilty at the earliest opportunity.

“He is subject to vigilante groups and lives a solitary existence.

“Mr Gibson knew remote monitoring software had been installed on his phone.

“At this time he started to drink to excess and pressed the self-destruct button as he clearly knew he would be caught.

“He fully accepts a custodial sentence is inevitable in this case.”

Sentencing, Sheriff Eoin McGinty said: “Sexual Offences Prevention Orders are put in place to protect the public, particularly children and vulnerable people, so the court has to take these types of offences seriously otherwise these orders are toothless.

“With passage of time your offending behaviour gets worse.”

Sheriff McGinty jailed Gibson for 14 months, backdating this to his date of remand on April 19.

In December 2020, Gibson messaged four women he knew through his Facebook account, while at his home in Paisley.

But he had failed to tell police about the interactions and had deleted the Facebook and Messenger apps from his phone, and with it his activity on the apps – which was another breach of his SOPO conditions.

In 2019, vile Gibson was caged for 15 months for sending a nude picture of himself to an undercover paedophile hunter.

He tried to groom someone he thought was a 12-year-old girl for sex - but she was actually an adult decoy.

He had actually been messaging a member of Wolf Pack Hunters UK, which roots out and identifies online groomers who target children.

They chatted through apps Skout and WhatsApp, with Gibson saying he wanted to teach her to kiss, that he wanted her to touch his private parts and that he wanted to have sex with her without wearing a condom.

After telling her “sex is not sore” he sent a photograph of himself naked with his private parts clearly exposed and his face visible.

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