A Renfrewshire paedophile is back in jail after breaching the conditions of his Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO).
Robert Gibson was imprisoned in 2019 for sending a naked picture of himself to who he thought was a 12-year-old girl. The 'girl' was in fact an undercover paedophile hunter.
Gibson, who worked for the UK Passport Office, was rumbled and put behind bars for 15 months. The 44-year-old was released from prison over that jail term and was made the subject of a SOPO in November 2020.
The predator, from Bridge of Weir, appeared at Paisley Sheriff Court on Friday to admit breaching the terms of his SOPO.
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The terms were breached by watching pornography online then deleting his internet browsing history, the Paisley Daily Express reports.
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 had 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 he 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, he was imprisoned for 15 months for sending a nude picture of himself to an undercover paedophile hunter.
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