Edinburgh courts: Man who posed as teenage girl online to get videos is referred to High Court for sentence
A man posed online as a teenage schoolgirl to lure children into sending him videos of them urinating in public and engaging in sexual activity with a dog.
Ross Jameson bribed his victims - aged between nine and 13 - with alcohol and vapes in exchange for phone footage of them performing the horror acts.
Jameson met up with two youngsters after contacting them on Tik Tok and Snapchat and encouraged the children to ask their school pals to send him videos.
The 43-year-old IT consultant told one girl she “looked innocent” in her school uniform and asked another to film herself carrying out a solo sex act with a hairbrush.
Jameson was eventually caught after children were found sharing some of the disturbing videos among their friends at two primary schools in Edinburgh in February last year.
He appeared from custody at Edinburgh Sheriff Court last month and pleaded guilty to eight offences of sending sexual communication to children and causing them to look at sexual images, all between August 2024 and April last year.
Jameson returned to the dock for sentencing this week where Sheriff Matthew Jackson KC told him the case is being remitted to the High Court where stricter sentences can be imposed.
Prosecutor Bruce McCrossan read out a written narration detailing the offences in front of horrified parents and relatives of the victims who were seated in the public gallery.
The fiscal depute said a police investigation was sparked after receiving reports of “children involved in sending videos of themselves urinating in public” to an adult male and to pupils at two primary schools in the Capital.
Officers traced a Snapchat account to Jameson and his home was raided on April 23 last year where a mobile phone was seized that contained chat logs asking children to urinate in public.
The police probe discovered Jameson had been using the alias of ‘Shannon, aged 15’ to make contact with eight victims aged between nine and 13.
Mr McCrossan said pictures and videos were found showing the children “engaging in sexualised posing, urination, masturbation” and on one occasion “sexual activity with a dog”.
Evidence was discovered that Jameson had met with two children and had plied them with alcohol and vapes in return for videos of them urinating in public places.
He encouraged the girls to ask their friends to join in and while pretending to be ‘Shannon’ he begged one youngster to film herself “naked spinning around” and to commit a sexual act with a hairbrush.
Jameson, from Newington, received sexual images from all eight children and engaged in online chats by discussing urinating on a bus and sexual contact with animals.
Following the sheriff’s decision to remit the case to the High Court angry and emotional parents and relatives shouted at Jameson as he was being led back to the court cell area.
One mother shouted “you dirty beast” and another yelled “rot in hell, you monster” while a third relative said “I hope you’re locked up for a long time”.
Jameson was also jailed for 18 months and placed on the sex offenders register for 10 years for similar offending in 2017.