Man who posted girls' pics on adult sites sentenced

Ryan Mochrie (23) took the pictures of women he knew from their Facebook profiles and added them to the online forum, where fellow users posted offensive sexual comments about the pictures.

One victim’s image was superimposed onto a picture of another women who was having sex.

Mochrie, formerly of Denny, but who now lives in Kilsyth appeared in Falkirk Sheriff Court today for sentencing.

He had earlier pled guilty to a breach of the peace by posting the images last year.

Sheriff Derek Livingston had considered placing Mochrie on the sex offenders register, but said there was “insufficient evidence” to consider a sexual element to his actions.

Procurator fiscal depute Samantha Brown said there was no evidence Mochrie had photoshopped the images into pornographic scenes himself.

Mochrie posted “innocent” photos of three women, aged between 16 and 20, onto the message board of a sex site under the name FalkirkLad.

After the story broke, Mochrie, who is partially sighted due to albinism, handed himself into police.

Ms Brown said: “Those images are just normal images of these people.

“They were taken from Facebook profiles and posted on the website and thereafter enabled members of the public to make sexually explicit comments about these photos.

“The images were added to by other members and turned into sexually explicit images.

“The comments on the images have caused a great deal of upset as they had not given their consent.”

Mochrie shared his victims’ pictures with their full names, and wrote comments including: “love falkirk girls got hunners to trade”.

The sleazy website encourages users to share images of real women so they can download them, print them out and use them for porn.

The last dozen messages written by Falkirklad on the forum were appeals to moderators to delete his account and posts.

Mochrie’s defence agent Kevin Douglas described his client as an “idiot”.

He said: “He is the first to accept that. He rues the moment he decided to do that. He knew most of the girls.

“He was looking at this site and then he himself had been drawn into putting images on. He never thought for one moment what he was doing.

“He has well and truly learned his lesson.”

Sentencing, Sheriff Livingston said: “He has taken innocent pictures and really the problem is he has lifted them and put them on a site a good deal less than innocent.

“It seems bizarre behaviour to save the profile pictures of certain girls and put them on another site without their consent without any sort of major relationship. They’re more acquaintances.

“If he gets involved with this ever again - doing it a second time could give rise to all sorts of questions being asked.

“It’s difficult for me to assess what your motivation was here. It did cause a considerable degree of distress.”

Mochrie was initially handed a £300 fine, which was reduced to £250 due to his early guilty plea and the fact he had not been in trouble with the courts before.