Scots paedophile jailed for grooming teenage girl from prison cell
A paedophile who groomed a teenage girl from his prison cell has been jailed.
Thomas Campbell was behind bars when some of the messages were sent to what he believed was a 14-year-old girl.
But he was actually messaging an adult decoy and he was arrested and charged over the incident.
He denied all wrongdoing and went on trial before a jury at Paisley Sheriff Court earlier this year.
But he was convicted and returned to the dock on Monday, October 12, 2026, to learn his fate.
The 35-year-old, who had spent more than 430 days on remand over the crimes, was jailed for three months.
He was also placed on the Sex Offenders' Register for seven years.
He sent indecent and sexually explicit messages to the Facebook profile of someone he thought was a 14-year-old called Libby Taylor in June 2024.
But he was actually messaging an adult pretending to be the youngster and operating the profile in a bid to catch online predators.
Campbell, of Clarkston, East Renfrewshire, used Facebook Messenger to contact the fictitious youngster.
He sent her explicit messages and asked her to send her intimate pictures of herself, despite her having said she was underage.
He also sent naked pictures of himself to her and asked her if she liked what she had seen.
His trial heard that "Libby" received a friend request from Campbell in June 2024 and that it was accepted.
They then exchanged messages on Facebook Messenger, with him telling her he was 33 and from Glasgow after she said she was a 14-year-old from Norwich.
Campbell told her he was "not a mad creep" and then asked her about school before asking to see pictures of her in her underwear.
He asked her for further pictures and described himself as her "future husband", and also sent a number of sexual messages.
In one, he told her he wanted to perform a sex act on her, which the jury was told left the decoy feeling sickened.
The chat contained audio recordings, indecent images and sexual messages, but the chat logs were later deleted by Campbell.
He was later the subject of a sting by an online child protection team but is believed to have been hiding upstairs in his mum's house while claiming to actually have been in a pub in Edinburgh.
Campbell had previously been released on bail over the offences due to the amount of time spent on remand over the case.
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