EDINBURGH MAN AVOIDS JAIL AFTER CHILD SEX OFFENCES
A pervert who travelled from his home in England to have sex with a teenage schoolboy at an Edinburgh hotel has avoided a jail sentence.Man Lok Ng made contact with the young victim on the Discord group chat app before arranging to meet up with him at a Premier Inn in the capital’s city centre in January last year.
The 24-year-old Thai national then engaged in sexual intercourse with the boy despite the lad being under the age of 16.
The boy’s concerned mother managed to track her son to the hotel and after the police were called in officers discovered disgusting child abuse images on Ng’s mobile phone.
Edinburgh Sheriff Court was told the sick material involved victims aged between three and 14-years old being sexually abused by adults.
The court heard the mobile phone also contained evidence the warehouse worker was a member of an online child abuse group involving “hundreds of thousands of participants”.
Ng, from Warrington, Cheshire, pleaded guilty to three child sex abuse offences when he appeared at the capital court earlier this year and returned to the dock for sentencing on Tuesday.
Solicitor Mary Moultrie, defending, told the court her client was a first offender and had not been in trouble since being arrested in Edinburgh 20 months ago.
Sheriff Douglas Keir said: "As Ms Moultrie has accepted on your behalf these are very serious offences and it is clear the custodial threshold has been reached.
"The fact you travelled to have sex with the child in the meeting who is under 16 is an aggravation as far as I’m concerned." The sheriff said due to Ng’s age and that he is a first offender he had decided there was an alternative to a prison sentence.
Sheriff Keir placed Ng on a community payback order with a supervision element of 24 months as a direct alternative to custody.
Ng was also placed on the sex offenders register for two years and ordered to take part in sessions with the sex offenders rehabilitation programme Maps for Change.
Previously the court was told the schoolboy had asked his mother to drop him off in Edinburgh city centre at around 10am on January 21 last year.
The mother was said to have become suspicious her son had arranged to meet someone and asked the boy to keep his phone on so she could track his movements.
After heading towards Cockburn Street the court was told boy turned his phone off and was met at a Premier Inn hotel by Ng and the pair went to a room on the fourth floor.
The boy’s mother managed to trace her son to the hotel and met him in the foyer around an hour later.
Hotel staff were alerted and the court heard a cleaner had attended at the room.
The police were contacted and officers found Ng had returned to the room.
He said he had met the boy in the Discord app and had travelled to meet with him from his home in England.
The court was told Ng’s phone was examined and sexual messages between him and the boy were found along with nine images depicting child abuse - including six at Category A.
Deleted chat logs were also recovered that “indicated the accused was part of a large chat thread with hundreds of thousands of participants in which child sexual exploitation was discussed”.
The sheriff was told the mobile device contained “several searches for underage pornography”.
Ng pleaded guilty to charges of communicating with an underage boy, and to having sexual intercourse at the Premier Inn, East Market Street, Edinburgh on January 21 last year.
He also admitted to possessing indecent images of children between June 10, 2020 and January 21 last year.
