SHERIFF IN FURY OVER SEX BEAST SENTENCE.
A SHERIFF has attacked rules limiting jail terms for child sex offenders.Sheriff Simon Fraser spoke out after he jailed a repeat sex offender for just three months for showing porn to children.
Henry Spence, 36, was already on the sex offenders' register for having sex with an under-age girl.
Dumbarton Sheriff Court was told Spence superimposed photographs of the heads of a boy and girl, both nine, on to pornographic pictures of adults he had downloaded from the internet.
Then he showed the doctored images repeatedly to the children at his home in Bellsmyre, Dumbarton.
Sheriff Fraser outlined his frustration at being forced to limit Spence's jail term to just three months.
It follows a controversial ruling last month in which three appeal court judges in Edinburgh decided that people convicted of downloading child porn from the net should not serve more than a year in jail.
Sheriff Fraser told Spence: 'You have stood in court before convicted of a sexual offence.
Parliament has decreed in its wisdom that the maximum sentence I can impose is three months.
To me, that seems completely inadequate.' Margaret Mellon, of the children's charity NCH Scotland, welcomed the sheriff's comments yesterday.
He said: 'The sentence of this case does not reflect the harm to the children involved.
This seems to be a clear case of child sex abuse and we share the concern of the sheriff that the court did not have the power to impose a more severe penalty.'
