Description
A highly dangerous sex offender has been banned from using dating apps for the next 15 years in order to protect potential victims.
Predatory paedophile John Johnstone was jailed for 30 months and placed on the Sex Offenders Register for life at Dundee Sheriff Court. A highly restrictive Sexual Offences Prevention Order was also imposed on Johnstone for 15 years - including a ban on using social media networks and dating sites.
Johnstone - who built a secret den behind a fireplace in his home as the centre of his sex offending behaviour - was described as being "very high risk." He admitted that between 17 May and 28 July 2020 he intentionally caused a 14-year-old boy to look at sexual images by sending him child abuse material.
He admitted that between 21 May and 27 July 2020 he made the same boy participate in sexual activity by forcing him to send pictures of his genitals to Johnstone.
Sheriff Paul Brown told him: "This is an instance of serious sexual offending, against a background of a record of similar offending. There is a degree of overlap with the previous offence.
"However, it is clear to me that this is a distinct matter that carries a greater degree of culpability and harm. There is no alternative to custody. I also consider that to protect the public from serious sexual harm I have to impose a Sexual Offences Prevention Order."
The SOPO severely limits Johnstone's online activities and bans him from having any unsupervised cntact with anyone under the age of 18. Sheriff Brown banned Johnstone from using social networks until after his 60th birthday and banned him from taking up "any hobbies" which might bring him into contact with children.
Counsel Iain Smith, defending, said: "He is assessed as being at very high risk of further sexual offending. It is so high, in the social worker's conclusion, that it is indicative of a well-established pattern of behaviour that requires corrective intervention."
The dark web beast had previously been jailed for 40 months in 2021 after he filmed himself abusing a young girl, before sharing it with other paedophiles. In that case, Sheriff Alistair Carmichael described Johnstone as "a committed user and maker of indecent images of children."
Farm worker Johnstone built a secret den behind a fireplace to store his vile haul of child pornography and used the dark web to distribute material worldwide. Evil Johnstone bragged to social workers that he had done no "actual harm" to the girl because she had been asleep while he was abusing her.
Sheriff Carmichael also placed him on the Sex Offenders Register for life and made him the subject of a five-year SOPO. That has now been trebled in duration.
The sheriff said: "You went to some lengths to try and hide computers and changed sim cards regularly, presumably to try and evade detection for what you were doing. You were a user of the dark web and employed quite sophisticated software kit to facilitate that.
"It seems to me you are a committed user and maker of indecent images of children and I see no alternative to a custodial sentence."
Solicitor Sarah Russo, defending, said: "He tells me he deeply regrets his actions. It is his position in the report that he wasn't doing any actual harm to the child because they were sleeping."
Johnstone, 45, took photos of himself carrying out sex acts and posing with sex toys next to a sleeping four-year-old girl. He then put them on paedophile sites on the dark web and asked others to send similar material back to him in exchange.
The court heard how he scoured Facebook and other social media to collect more than 400 images of another young girl he knew and had a fixation with. The twisted labourer was also caught with extreme animal porn and thousands of child porn images, and he had superimposed a head shot of one child onto a woman's body in an explicit sexual image.
Detective Chief Inspector Richie Banks, of Police Scotland's National Child Abuse Investigation Unit, said: "John Johnstone is a dangerous and predatory individual whose levels of hidden criminal activity over a number of years show he was not only a risk to children in Scotland, but worldwide.
"Online offenders may think they are anonymous, and they may not comprehend the terrible, devastating and lifelong impact their actions have on children.
"But there is no excuse for their actions. Online images of child abuse and exploitation are not virtual, they show the very real abuse of a real child."