A Stirlingshire high school teacher who performed a partial striptease for a 15-year-old schoolgirl he called “the full package” was this week spared a jail sentence.
Kenneth O’Brien targeted the girl who was in one of his classes.
At Stirling Sheriff Court on Wednesday, the 29-year-old was placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register and given two years’ supervision and a curfew.
The court had heard that last year, the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was in the gym hall when O’Brien came to find her, and told her she had to go to his classroom to complete a test she had “missed”.
When she got there, there was no-one else in the classroom.
Alone with the girl, O’Brien told her that he would add her on Snapchat “if he was feeling good”, before marking her test, saying “congratulations, you’ve passed”, and slapping her on the buttocks over her clothing.
The girl went to the toilets and “broke down”, but later found O’Brien had indeed added her as a friend on the social messaging service.
Fiscal depute James Moncrieff said that O’Brien told the girl to change his name on Snapchat “for the sake of his career”.
The girl then sent him five pictures of herself wearing only underwear, and he replied, “You’re the full package, aren’t you?”
He later sent her selfies of himself taken in the school toilets with his hands down his trousers - and a video which showed him lowering a towel down his body - without actually exposing his private parts.
He said this was “his turn to tease”.
Next day he messaged her again saying, “I’m off periods three and five, baby.”
He asked her to let him know where they could meet.
Click here for more news and sport from the Stirling area.
The girl told one of her closest friends. Mr Moncrieff said: “Her friend insisted they contacted her mum, which they did, along with a member of staff.”
O’Brien was arrested at his home in Blantyre, South Lanarkshire, two weeks later.
He pleaded guilty to engaging in sexual activity with a person under 18 while an adult in a position of trust contrary to the 2009 Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act.
Solicitor-advocate Gordon Martin, defending, told Sheriff Keith O’Mahony that O’Brien had been suspended when the matter came to light. He had never been in trouble before save for a speeding matter.
Mr Martin added: “His career is at an end.”
Sheriff O’Mahony told O’Brien: “I am persuaded by a narrow margin that I can deal with this in a non-custodial manner as a direct alternative to custody.”
He sentenced O’Brien to a community payback order comprising two years’ supervision.
He was also given a restriction of liberty order (tag) confining him to his home each day for eight months between the hours of 6pm and 6am.
O’Brien was also placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register for five years.
