A 76-year-old Caithness man has been jailed for molesting a young teenage girl.
George Cameron was found guilty of sexual assault after a jury was told he asked the child for “a hug” before kissing and licking her neck and face and touching her chest.
Following the attack, he encouraged his young victim to keep it a secret.
Cameron appeared at Inverness Sheriff Court for sentencing after a jury took under three hours to return a majority guilty verdict on the charge at an earlier hearing.
Their decision came following two days of evidence during which the victim described how Cameron had kissed and licked her neck and face, before lifting her top to expose her chest.
OAP bared chest during assault
In evidence led by fiscal depute Naomi Duffy-Welsh, she told how the pensioner pulled up his own top and pressed his bare chest against her exposed breasts, pulling her towards him.
The incident left the girl “scared”, “uncomfortable” and “distressed”.
In a recorded interview played for the jury, she explained she had tried to stop Cameron.
“I grabbed his wrist and said please don’t,” she said.
The child reported the assault to her father who said his daughter was “shaken and confused” in the aftermath.
A police officer who dealt with the case said the girl was “visibly shaking” when they spoke to her.
Cameron, a retired maintenance foreman, was interviewed by police but denied having had any physical contact with the child.
Caithness pensioner’s DNA was on girl’s neck and chest
A forensic examination, however, found DNA consistent with his own on the girl’s neck, along with a substance found in human saliva.
DNA matching Cameron’s was also present on the child’s chest and shorts.
Giving evidence in his own defence in the trial Cameron called the child’s account of the incident on September 12 of 2022 “absolute rubbish”.
As the details of the charge were put to him he repeatedly answered: “I did not.”
But jurors rejected his version of events and found Cameron guilty of sexually assaulting the child.
At the sentencing hearing, Mr Beardmore told the court his client continues to deny the offence.
He noted that while it was a “contact” sexual offence, it did not involve penetration and said: “He was able to exercise some degree of control.”
Attack left victim ‘traumatised’
Mr Beardmore said: “It is difficult to say why this particular offence occurred – his position, of course, is that it didn’t.”
He said Cameron had since been assessed as being at low risk of reoffending and asked Sheriff Robert Frazer to consider a non-custodial sentence.
But Sheriff Frazer said: “This is a serious charge made all the more so by the age of your victim and her obvious vulnerability.”
He noted that a victim impact statement described how the young complainer had been “understandably traumatised” by the incident – to the extent that she is now “fearful to leave her home”.
He jailed Cameron, of Sinclair Lane, Halkirk, for 13 months.
