Paedophile who directed recordings of young girls being raped and assaulted over internet from his Lochinver home is jailed
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A paedophile who directed and recorded appalling sex attacks on young girls over the internet from his home Lochinver has been jailed for 12 years.
Gary Campbell, a former retained firefighter, paid for adults in the Philippines to abuse children as young as four as he watched it in "real time" on a livestream from more than 6000 miles away.
The filmed sex attacks included the rape of two girls aged eight and nine by an adult male who Campbell was told was 25. He said: "He is very lucky getting to do a show with these girls."
Campbell (59) paid as little as £10 ahead of sessions in which young girls were molested and performed sex acts for his gratification.
A judge told him at the High Court in Edinburgh on Friday: "You used the advantage of the comparative wealth of our society in order to pay people to corrupt children."
Lord Beckett said: "Over a period of more than two years you were intermittently sexually corrupting young children."
The judge said: "You will appreciate these are grave crimes indeed, for which there is no alternative to a prison sentence."
He ordered that Campbell should be under supervision for a further three years during which he can be returned to jail if he breaches licence conditions.
The judge told him that he would have faced a 15-year prison term but for his guilty pleas.
Campbell, now of Windsor Court, Perth, earlier admitted 13 charges including rape, sexual assault and inciting children to become providers of sexual services.
The sex crimes were committed between June 2012 and August 2014 while he was living at Culag Gardens, Lochinver.
Advocate depute Margaret Barron told the court: "On May 10 in 2021 officers from the National Child Abuse Investigation Unit in Inverness received information that on September 23, 2020, a female living in the Philippines had been arrested for producing, possessing and distributing indecent images of children and for livestreaming child abuse."
The prosecutor said: "Information was received that the accused Gary Campbell had made payments to this woman on 13 separate occasions."
Police seized a laptop, Macbook, iPod, USB sticks and micro cards from his home and discovered that he had a Skype account with the user name "gary24pucket".
The advocate depute said videos and chat logs that were recovered showed Campbell provided directions to adults in the Philippines to assault the children.
She said: "On occasion during the livestreaming of the assaults the accused advises those broadcasting the livestream if he is having difficulty seeing the children, which results in the children and adults repositioning themselves to enable the accused to see what is being done to the children."
The prosecutor said it indicated that Campbell was not only watching the children being abused in "real time" but that he was directing those in the Philippines to assault the youngsters.
During one Skype conversation with a Filipina woman he told her: "I am always excited to see young girls." In another call he asked another woman: "What is the youngest you can get me?"
The former water treatment operative was arrested by police in June 2021 and during an interview made "no comment" replies to questions.
Defence solicitor advocate Shahid Latif said Campbell was a first offender who has seen a psychotherapist and undertaken work to deal with the factors that led to the offending.
He told the court: "There is no doubt he is thoroughly ashamed and disgusted by his behaviour."
Campbell was told that he will be on the sex offenders' register indefinitely following his sentencing.
