John Nicoll was caught with stash of child porn just weeks after moving to Scotland.
http://news.stv.tv/scotland/193405-american-paedophile-jailed-for-year/
A paedophile branded a serious danger by a Scottish police chief has partly blamed his crimes on a strict childhood as a Jehovah's Witness in the USA.John Nicoll was jailed for a year on Monday after he was caught with a huge stash of child pornography on his home computer. He was also placed on a further six-month supervised release order and banned from working with children or having any solo contact with girls under 16.
Nicoll told social workers that he had reacted against his strict religious upbringing and had slept with more than 40 lovers in the space of a few years.
He also said that he had rebelled against the church's doctrine not to touch himself in a sexual way and had developed a compulsive interest in sickening child pornography.
The American paedophile began downloading pictures and videos of children being sexually abused within days of arriving in Scotland in May 2008, Perth Sheriff Court was told.
He had come to Scotland to stay with his father two years ago after spending nearly two years in an American prison for breaking into a family home and sexually assaulting a ten-year-old girl in her bed.
Solicitor Linda Clark, defending, said: "Mr Nicoll was brought up in a household with a fairly strict religious intervention. Whilst he does not blame that for what he has done he is able to comment that a lot of his behaviour, which would be normal for children or young adults, was not approved of in the household.
"After leaving home and being on his own he developed relationships with 40 women over a very short period. None were lasting and he described them as more or less one night stands.
"He has given an account of how it is that he came to be looking at these items on the internet. First of all it was a curious glance, which seems to have developed into almost a compulsion."
The court was told that Nicoll, 28, had been assessed as posing a "very high risk" to the public by both social workers and psychologists who had worked with him.
Nicoll had been viewing child porn within weeks of arriving in Perth in Scotland. He admitted downloading 1138 images between June 9 2008 and June 9 2009.
Fiscal depute Alan Kempton told the court: "He has no Scottish or British previous convictions. However, in 2004 he was convicted in North Carolina of an offence of indecency.
"It is believed that he resided in the USA and he indicated that he moved to the UK in May 2008. In June 2009, police received information, as a result of which a search warrant was applied for.
"Several computers were recovered. Upon examination, child pornography was recovered from data devices. There were live and deleted video clips and images."
Mr Kempton told the court that the haul included material from each of the five categories, including level five such as children being violently sexually abused.
Nicoll was born to Scottish parents in Germany in March 1982, and the family moved to North Carolina the following year. In 2003 his parents split up and his father returned to live in Scotland, while Nicoll remained in Wake County, North Carolina, with his mother.
On March 15 2005 Nicoll was convicted on a charge of "indecent liberties with a child" at Raleigh Superior Court in his home state and was sent to a period of imprisonment between 19 and 23 months.
During the night of 28 August 2004 Nicol - under the cover of darkness - broke into a private house and went into a child's bedroom. While her parents were in another room, Nicoll sexually assaulted a ten-year-old girl while she was lying sleeping in her bed.
His prison sentence was initially suspended and he was placed on probation and ordered to reside at a state-run specialist residential unit for a 12-month period. He was also ordered to serve 60 days in the custody of the sheriff of Wake County and undergo psychiatric and psychological evaluation and treatment.
However, Nicoll failed to comply with one of the conditions of the probation and he was sent to prison to serve out the full term of his original 19-23 month sentence.