A telephone engineer has been fined after he posted a naked picture of a woman on Facebook – because he wanted to get back at her for ignoring him.
Gavin Thompson became hurt and angry after the woman he had been seeing suddenly stopped talking to him.
After she failed to respond to a number of text and Facebook messages, the 30-year-old sent her a warning that if she did not make contact with him he would publish her private pictures online.
Aberdeen Sheriff Court heard that when she did not respond Thompson uploaded the explicit picture onto Facebook and “tagged” his former lover.
Fiscal Depute Karen Dow said that when she logged into her account she was horrified to see the image – which she feared could be viewed by all of her contacts.
The court heard that although the image had been posted online Thompson had altered the settings so that only himself and his victim could see them. However the woman, who could be seen in the picture naked from the waist up, did not know this at the time.
Attached to the picture was a message written by Thompson which stated that as she “completely refused to acknowledge he existed”, he felt it was “time to get his own back” by posting the picture.
Thompson first appeared in court six months ago and admitted sending the message on November 7 last year when he knew it was “grossly offensive” and “of an indecent nature”.
At the time sentence was deferred for good behaviour and yesterday Sheriff Christopher Shead said as there had been no further incidents since he would deal with the matter “leniently”. He was fined £200.
Representing Thompson, solicitor Charles Benzies said it had been an act of “crass stupidity” by his client who had never been in any sort of trouble before.
He said Thompson only sent the message from a horse steading in Milltimber “to try to get her attention”.
Mr Benzies said his client was extremely sorry and that he wanted to apologise for his behaviour publicly to the court.
He insisted it was only meant to “scare her” and that Thompson had never wanted anyone else to see it.
Mr Benzies acknowledged that the woman would not have known this at first, however, which would have resulted in a great deal of concern to her.
Speaking after court yesterday Thompson, of 9 Union Glen Court, Aberdeen, said he was sorry for what he had done and said it was a “moment of stupidity”. He said he realised instantly what he had done was wrong and removed the picture around five minutes after uploading it.