Hunt begins for missing paedophile

A HUNT has been launched for a paedophile who has gone missing after being freed from court despite a sheriff predicting he would immediately go out and offend again.

James Murray, 18, escaped a prison term last summer after he admitted having a sexual encounter with a 14-year-old girl.

Murray blamed his victim and Sheriff Robert McCreadie freed him, despite telling his lawyer: “I don’t trust him for a moment.”

He was ordered to be of good behaviour, but yesterday he failed to turn up for sentence at Perth Sheriff Court. Sheriff Lindsay Foulis issued a warrant for his arrest.

When he was convicted in August last year, it was the culmination of a crime spree which had seen him commit 28 offences in 18 months.

He claimed that the girl had been “all over him” and that she had been trying to seduce him in a bid to test his faithfulness towards her friend.

Murray, of Dundee, admitted having a sexual encounter with the 14-year-old, who cannot be named, in a driveway in Invergowrie on 19 March last year, while he was on bail.

Speaking last year, Sheriff McCreadie said: “One strong argument is to test him by giving him his freedom with conditions of bail. I don’t trust him for a moment. I would only allow bail if he was curfewed. It is part of the bargain I am striking with him.”