Locations
Crawton Ness, Cove Bay, Aberdeen, AB12
Description
A convicted sex offender from Aberdeen broke the law again on the day he was released from prison — by setting up a TikTok account.
Mark Innes, 31, had been sentenced at the city’s sheriff court in July, 2020, for four offences. Two related to sexual communication with a child while two others were revenge porn crimes.
Innes — never previously in trouble — was handed a nine-month prison term. He was also ordered, indefinitely, to comply with sex offender register requirements which barred him from setting up social media accounts.
Prosecutor Steven Ball told Carlisle Crown Court: “On July 1, 2023, Police Scotland advised local police that the defendant was staying with his girlfriend in the Carlisle area.”
Innes, said Mr Ball, usually lived in Aberdeen and was supervised there by offender managers. When local officers in Cumbria paid him a visit to check compliance, he surrendered a Samsung mobile phone.
“Officers became concerned that he had accessed a site — believed to be a child sex abuse site — via Google five times on June 12,” said Mr Ball. “He had also accessed the Telegram site that day.
“Further examination of his phone revealed that he had established a number of social media accounts. The first one, TikTok, was created on the day of his release from his recall to custody on May 9.”
Instagram had been set up on May 31 and one on another messaging app several weeks later.” The court heard Innes had been recalled to prison on licence in March, 2022, before being released on May 9 this year.
In interview, Innes admitted to using Telegram and a chat group on which adult pornography was being shared. He spoke of clicking on a link he was given with four indecent child images emerging.
“He claimed to have been disgusted with what he had seen and went back into the site as he wanted to find a way of anonymously reporting it,” said Mr Ball. “Out of the five times he went into the account, the last two times were in order to delete it.
“He couldn’t explain why he thought he would be accessing adult porn given the name of the site. He told the police that he had scrolled past some of the images but they just downloaded, by themselves. He maintained that this must have been accidental.
“He fully admitted to creating the social media accounts and not informing the police within three days of their creation; he was under the impression that he had given the police his email account details and he had used that to set up the accounts even thought they were under a user name that bore no relation to his own name.”
Innes admitted four counts of breaching notification requirements and three of making indecent images of children — including 22 classed in category A, the most serious.
After considering mitigation, Recorder Kate Bex KC imposed an immediate 16-month jail term.
Innes, latterly of Crawton Ness, Cove Bay, Aberdeen, remains subject to the notification requirements. He must also observe 19 additional conditions as part of a separate sexual harm prevention order which will run for the next 10 years.