By Paul Higgins
A Co. Down creep who was caught engaging in online sexualised messaging with not one but THREE undercover decoys, wept in court as he was handed an Enhanced Combination Order.
Downpatrick Crown Court heard that while Trevor Bailie thought he was talking to two little boys and a “fellow paedophile who had access to two grandchildren…mercifully he wasn’t.”
Judge Geoffrey Miller KC told the 50-year-old if he had been talking to actual children and an actual paedophile, “there would have been no question of anything other than immediate custody.”
The judge explained that in his assessment, the case called for a 12 month sentence but that would mean Bailie serves six months in jail and six on licence, which was “plainly inadequate” as regards the time needed for Bailie to address his sexual deviancy.
Instead, and as a direct alternative to custody, Judge Miller imposed the ECO consisting of three years on probation and 100 hours of community service, warning the self-confessed pervert that he would be closely monitored and any breach, no matter how slight, would see him back in the dock and facing jail.
At an earlier hearing Bailie, from the Southwell Road in Bangor, entered guilty pleas to ten sex offences, committed between 6 July and 19 September 2023, including two counts each of attempted sexual communication with a child, attempting to cause a child to look at a sexual image, attempting to cause or incite a child to engage in a sexual activity.
He also admitted single counts of distributing and possessing indecent images of children, attempting to distribute indecent images and possessing extreme pornography.
During his sentencing remarks last Thursday, Judge Miller outlined how police from the Child Internet Detection Team, based on the defendant’s activities on social media apps, attended his then home and seized multiple devices.
He told the court Bailie had been interacting with three profiles, two posing as 12-year-old boys Alfie and Callum and a third, Jim, “posing as a 60 year old male with access to two grandchildren, age, seven, and five.”
Unbeknownst to Bailie, the profiles were all decoys and were in fact undercover police officers.
Judge Miller described that during exchanges with Alfie and Callum, Bailie “sent pictures of his penis and asked for pictures” and he also sent the ‘boys’ videos of himself masturbating.
During messages with the last profile ‘Jim,’ purportedly a 60-year-old male who says on his profile that he has “access” to two grandsons aged five and seven, “the defendant discusses the sexual abuse of children, specifically getting access to sexually abuse Jim’s grandchildren.”
There were also discussions about Bailie “travelling to Leeds in October 2023” and while that was described as “fantastical,” nothing ever happened because before Bailie could go anywhere, he was arrested.
When his phone was examined, cops uncovered two category A videos and 138 extreme images but during police interviews he refused to answer questions.
Judge Miller told the court that during interviews with a probation officer, Bailie told them the app he was using was “like another world” and he emphasised “how ashamed he was of his actions, noting that no sentence can compare to the harm he has caused.”
He said while Bailie denied “any outright sexual attraction to children” and denied that he ever thought about the conversations when he was offline, those assertions “must be viewed with scepticism given the nature and persistence of the offending behaviour.”
Sitting in the dock Bailie was visibly weeping tears of self pity as Judge Miller revealed how his disgusting offending had resulted in his parents and long term partner breaking off all contact and he had lost his well paid job at Belfast City Airport in what was described as a “monumental fall from grace.”
Defence counsel Conan Rea had highlighted that ‘the defendant has become something a pariah…a pariah to his family, his former partner, his peers, friends, and he now presents himself as an isolated, somewhat vulnerable individual, who will continue to bear the consequences of his offending for the rest of his life.”
Judge Miller agreed but both he and Mr Rea highlighted that the consequences for Bailie “flow directly from what he himself did.”
In coming to sentence the judge said “the discussion with Jim regarding the defendant’s desire to sexually abuse what he believed to be the decoy’s grandchildren, and the discussion about him visiting Leeds, no matter how unrealistic that might have been, gives rise to particular concern.”
Despite that concern, Judge Miller said while the custody threshold had clearly been passed Bailie had expressed shame as well as “a desire to work with probation.”
“Undoubtedly a period of intense work will be required if the risk he poses is to be fully addressed,” the judge told the court so in addition to imposing the ECO, he also imposed a five year Sexual Offences Prevention Order.
ENDS
CLANRYE NEWS 