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PF v Belov and Belova

Oct 9, 2026

At Dundee Sheriff Court, Sheriff Niven-Smith imposed a community payback order on Ilia Belov and Nadjedzha Belova after they were convicted of Threatening and abusive behaviour and assault on two children. Ilia Belov was also made subject to the notification requirements of the Sexual offences Act 2003 for a period of eighteen months

At today's hearing Sheriff Niven-Smith made the following remarks in court:

"Mr Belov before passing sentence I require to determine in terms of paragraph 60 of schedule 3 to the Sexual offences Act 2003 whether there was a significant sexual aspect to your commission of charge 1. When the court convicted you, I raised this issue with parties and invited submissions from them.

Having considered the submissions this morning I am satisfied that the appropriate legal test for me to apply is that expounded by the Lord Justice Clerk (Gill) in the case of Ian Hay against Her Majesty’s Advocate [2012] HCJAC 28 wherein at paragraph [52] he said:

“In my opinion it would be futile to define the word “significant” as it is used in paragraph 60. That is a question best left to the judgement of the sentencer. Since the purpose of registration is to protect the public against a perceived danger, the question whether a sexual aspect of the accused’s behaviour was significant should be assessed in that light. One way to approach that is to consider whether the sexual aspect is important enough to merit attention as indicating an underlying sexual disorder or deviance from which society is entitled to be protected (Wylie against M 2009 SLT (Sh ct) 18 as per sheriff Pyle). In this difficult exercise, in my view, sentencers should consider the accused’s behaviour in the context of the purpose and the effects of registration, keep a sense of proportion and use their commonsense.”

In charge 1 the victims were all female children who I will anonymise as XX aged 12 years, her sister XY aged 13 years and their friends AB and BC both aged 14 years.

The principle focus of your attention in charge 1 was the victim XX who was in fact the youngest in the group being 12 years of age although the court notes your comments were audible to the group of children.

Your victim XX recalled you saying unsolicited: “Come here sexy, I will show you how to have a good time”

Which according to her you repeated three or four times accordingly, you persisted in making sexualised comments to a child.

XY the sister of XX recalled you saying: “Hi Sexy, I will show you a good time.” That divergence is of no moment in considering this issue.

Those comments were not merely of the nature of a compliment which in itself would be wholly inappropriate given that XX was a child but also contained an implied threat, when viewed in context of a comment made by an adult male to a child, she being unable to consent to any activity with you of the kind you implied.

The evidence was clear that you came upon the group of girls by happenstance you and your father heading in one direction the girls heading in the opposite direction. Once you made those remarks you stopped turned and followed the girls, the nature of charge 1 was on the evidence sustained in nature.

I accept the remarks were made in public, during daylight hours however, you were 22 years of age at the time and a stranger to the girls.

That is the factual matrix in which I must apply the legal test.

The appeal court have observed that motivation for commission of an offence is an important consideration in determining if there is a significant sexual aspect to the offence. Against, the factual matrix I can infer that your motivation in making the remarks was for sexual gratification therefore the remarks when viewed in context are important enough to merit attention as indicating an underlying sexual disorder or deviance from which society is entitled to be protected.

I readily accept following the observations of the Sheriff Appeal Court this year in the case of Muhammad Aslam that if your version of events were true it would not be appropriate to conclude that there was a significant sexual aspect because similar to that case if this court accepted your account your remarks were motivated by reacting to racial abuse perpetrated by the girls upon you and the remarks they claim you said were never said by you but that is not the factual matrix I found established as I did not accept your evidence in that regard and preferred the girls evidence taken in combination with the public space CCTV all of which was that you initiated the contact and it was as the witnesses said, not as you said.

In the circumstances of this case, I am satisfied that there was a significant sexual aspect to the commission of charge 1 and I prefer the submissions of the Crown to those of the defence.

Sentence

It now falls to me to impose sentence upon you both, Mr Belov in respect of charges 1 and 3 which I convicted you of following trial and in respect of you Miss Belova charge 2 which you pled guilty to under deletion on the morning of the first day of the trial.

In sentencing you both, I shall have regard to the relevant sentencing guidelines issued by the Scottish sentencing council.

Specifically, the principles and purposes of sentencing guideline effective from 26 November 2018 and the Sentencing process guideline effective from 22 September 2021.

In addition, I note that you are both under 25 years of age as at today’s date -the date of sentence- accordingly I shall also have regard to the Sentencing Young People guideline effective from 26 January 2022.

In respect of the sentencing process guideline, I need to assess the seriousness of the offences you were found guilty or pled guilty to by reference to two touchstones firstly, your culpability and secondly, the harm or potential harm that your offending caused whether physical and/or psychological.

Dealing with you Mr Belov first and your culpability: -

I note that you are 23 years of age.

Whilst I note from the terms of the justice social work report that you left school aged 16 with no formal academic qualifications there is nothing to suggest that you have learning difficulties or cognitive impairment that might reduce your culpability.

The report suggests a degree of employment history since moving to the United Kingdom and the court can infer from the description of those jobs you required to take and follow instructions from others and work both with and without supervision.

Taking these things together I am satisfied that you are someone who possess the necessary intelligence to recognise that to act in the way you did in charge 1 might cause fear or alarm to the children involved and further I am satisfied that you would recognise to assault someone as you did in charge 3 particularly a female child might cause her physical injury and/or psychological harm.

I note there is no history of mental illness. No history of drink or drug addiction.

Taking a trauma informed approach to sentence, I note that the author of the justice social work report considered departmental records and noted certain adverse childhood events whilst these records appear to be contradicted by your self-report of “a perfect” childhood I prefer the social work records and reject your self-report. Accordingly, I attach some significance to the documented traumatic events in considering your culpability.

The court recognises that the remarks made which formed part of charge 1 were not pre-planned or premediated. You encountering the female children was entirely by coincidence, you did not seek them out in a predatory manner.

Whilst I recognise there was no pre-planning per se in respect of charge 1 there was a period of time between your initial interaction with the children and the commission of charge 3 when you were standing at the top of the steps down to the walkway, when you were using your mobile to phone your sister, when adults shown in the CCTV footage gestured you to walk away and gestured your victims to walk away, that was a period of time in which you could and should as an adult have cooled off and heeded the sage advice and walked away. You did not take that advice and instead continued to follow your victims by those actions you continued your interaction such it was inevitable that something would happen between you and the group of female children you followed, albeit I accept it was not necessarily your intention in following them to assault them but in following them your behaviour was intentional and clearly by that point intended to intimidate them and thereafter your assault was intentional.

I accept research which in the generality suggests that you as a male aged 22 at the time of the commission of these offences are generally less able to exercise good judgement when making decisions than an older male, you are less able to think about the consequences of your actions and might take more risks than an older person accordingly, your culpability as a young person will be lower than that of an older person if sentenced for the same thing. However, there is nothing obvious within the report suggesting that you are immature for your age and any submission to that effect is militated by the fact you are married with two young children.

I consider in your case your culpability should be assessed as high.

Turning to the second touchstone to assess the seriousness of your offending the harm or potential harm that your offending caused: -

As alluded to already there were multiple victims of your offending in charge 1.

Those victims were all children.

The principle focus of your attention in charge 1 was the victim XX who was then 12 years of age.

Your victim XX recalled you saying directly to her: “Come here sexy, I will show you how to have a good time”

Which according to her you repeated three or four times.

XY the sister of XX recalled you saying: “Hi Sexy, I will show you a good time.”

There was a consistency in your victims’ evidence that despite you heading in a different direction when you first encountered your victims after making those remarks you changed direction and followed those children.

I am entirely satisfied that your conduct was sustained in nature given the evidence of your victims and the CCTV evidence taken together.

Given your age in comparison to the age of your victims, the fact you were described by them as a muscular male in his 20’s, you were a stranger to them and considering the whole circumstances your conduct will have had a psychological impact upon your victims.

One of the victims who I earlier anonymised as AB said in her evidence: “I was confused by what was happening, I was nervous, so I decided to leave.” From memory she ran off. That evidence is eloquent of her sustaining psychological trauma from your actions.

In respect of charge 3 I need to acknowledge that the Crown did not libel “injury”. The evidence was to the effect that your victim XX struck her head on the bannister during your attack upon her, as a result she had a sore head above her ear. There was no evidence of actual physical injury.

Turning to psychological trauma that was self-evident having regard to XX’s extremely distressed condition after the attack when she in her words: “grabbed the blades” and presented them.

Her subsequent brandishing of the weapons in a distressed condition was filmed by you. I attach significance to her distressed condition in that footage in assessing the potential harm caused.

You had the proprietorial rights to that footage. That footage filmed by you emerged online. The court can therefore conclude that either you uploaded your footage to social media or you sent the footage to another or others who then uploaded the footage to social media. The result of the footage filmed by you ending up on social media has resulted in your victims XX and XYs images appearing online unpixellated meaning they have lost their entitlement to anonymity as child witnesses and now victims. Regrettably XX and XY’s names also now appear on social media and that has undoubtedly continued the psychological trauma for each of these young children and may haunt them into adulthood but for the avoidance of doubt I shall disregard that in assessing harm the result not necessarily being intended by you and the uploading of the footage does not form part of the charge.

That footage of XX brandishing the weapons and calling you and your sister “kid bashers” led to some public figures commentating erroneously upon what had happened calling into question your victims’ truthfulness and prolonging their psychological trauma, again I shall disregard that in assessing harm.

Against the erroneous comments it is very important to underline that this court has found as a fact that the weapons in the possession of XX were not visible to you or others, and the weapons were not removed from her clothing where they were hidden until after you assaulted her, and her presentation of them according to her was to stop the attack upon her and her sister by you and your sister.

This court has of course been privy to public space CCTV and private CCTV which had not appeared online which captured the events prior to the weapons being produced which of course provide along with the girl’s testimony which I accepted a wholly different narrative from that which you and others attempted to write into history.

I assess harm and potential harm in your case as high and therefore assess overall seriousness as high.

This case is prosecuted on a summary complaint; mode of prosecution is entirely a decision taken by the Crown office and Procurator Fiscal service, the public Prosecutor in Scotland entirely independently of the court. Such a decision is taken by an experienced lawyer after careful consideration of all the available material. That decision-maker will also consider the likely disposal in deciding upon the mode of prosecution. These comments should not be read as a criticism of the independent prosecutor but are merely scene setting so that you and others might understand the ultimate sentence in this case. The mode of prosecution means that the maximum sentence available to me today is 12 months imprisonment.

In this case I am satisfied that you have crossed the custody threshold given my assessment of the seriousness of your offending.

I now need to consider whether there are aggravating and/or mitigating circumstances.

I acknowledge that you are a first offender and are otherwise of good character.

Having carefully considered the terms of the report I do not consider that you are genuinely contrite or remorseful for your actions you appeared to the author of the report to “externalise responsibility onto the victims” accordingly, that is not a mitigating factor.

However, I need to recognise that you have been significantly affected by your commission of these offences because of the worldwide commentators predominately on social media which resulted in the loss of your employment and has placed the safety of your family at risk.

I note that the author of the report has carried out a risk assessment using several risk assessment tools namely the Risk Matrix 2000 and the Stable and Acute 2007. In the former you were assessed as average risk of being convicted of a further sexual offence and on the latter low risk for sexual recidivism. I note that the opinion of the author of the report is that the composite assessment places you in the average risk level.

The court recognises that these offences occurred on 23rd August last year and accordingly, you have not been convicted of any other offence in the last year demonstrating your ability to live a pro-social life.

The legislature provides you with the protection of the rebuttable presumption contained in section 204(3A) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 namely;

“a court must not pass a sentence of imprisonment for a term of 12 months or less on a person unless the court considers that no other method of dealing with the person is appropriate.”

In sentencing the young there is more to sentencing than sending messages to society so that deterrence is not a legitimate aim of my sentence but for your age a deterrent sentence would be appropriate to mark society’s condemnation of acting in this way towards children.

Given your age the primary consideration in sentencing you is rehabilitation.

In all the circumstances having regard to your lack of record, your previous good character, your age, the presumption against short custodial sentences and considering proportionality I am satisfied that there is a direct alternative to custody available in your case which meets the sentencing aims of punishment, retribution and very importantly given your relative youth affords you an opportunity for rehabilitation.

Normally where there is an offence which attracts the notification requirements of the Sexual offences Act and offences which do not on the same complaint it would be appropriate to select individual sentences for each offence. I have given consideration to that approach but consider that the court shall impose a cumulo penalty meaning one penalty for charges 1 and 3, rather than impose two separate community based disposals, as in this case that approach will make no difference to the period for which you will be subject to the notification requirements.

The sentence of the court will comprise of two elements, one element to offer supervision and rehabilitation in the community the second a punitive element to allow you to be punished whilst in the community.

I propose to impose a Community Payback order comprising of eighteen (18) months supervision that will have you under the supervision of the court far longer than any period you would serve in custody in this case.

The court will also impose three hundred (300) hours of unpaid work or other activity (the maximum available to me) to be completed within 12 months.

This is as a direct alternative to imprisonment.

I propose in your case to assign a review in three months’ time to monitor your progress and ensure that you are complying with the terms of the order.

If you fail to attend supervision appointments as directed by your supervising officer without a reasonable excuse, or

If you fail to attend for unpaid work or fail to carry out the work as directed by your supervising officer to a satisfactory standard without a reasonable excuse, your supervising officer will submit a breach report to the court. In such a situation the court can issue a warrant for your arrest and if you are found to have failed to comply with the terms of this order the order can be revoked and then you can be sentenced as if no order were imposed which in your case may result in the imposition of imprisonment.

Now are you prepared to carry out the community payback order as I have just outlined as a direct alternative to custody?

In your case the court is satisfied that in terms of paragraph 60 of schedule 3 to the Sexual Offences Act 2003 there was a significant sexual aspect to the commission of charge 1. In those circumstances in terms of section 82 of that Act, you are subject to the notification requirements of the Sexual offences Act 2003 for a period of eighteen months after this case you will require to wait in court to be served with paperwork in relation to that determination.

Miss Belova

Turning to your culpability: -

I note that you are now 20 years of age.

I note from the justice social work report prepared in respect of you that you left school aged 16 when your family moved to the United Kingdom. There is no reference to you attaining any academic qualifications but again like your brother there is nothing to suggest that you have learning difficulties or cognitive impairment that would reduce your culpability.

Like your brother you have a good work ethic and have had several jobs. I note that most recently you travelled to the Netherlands where you were picking fruit. I note you expressed a desire to find work here in Scotland once your fate has been determined in this case. Again, from your work history the court can infer that you have the ability to take instructions and work with or without supervision suggesting that you to have the intellectual capacity had you paused you would have appreciated that attending as you did at the request of your brother and attacking a female child might result in her sustaining physical injury and/or psychological trauma.

You have no relevant physical heath issues and no mental health issues. You do not consume drugs or alcohol.

Importantly in your case I note that at the time of the assault you were 19 years of age. I also note that unlike your brother you have no real command of English. You and the remainder of your family are heavily reliant upon your brother your co-accused to translate and your brother appears to assume a greater degree of responsibility almost acting as a father-like figure to you and his other younger siblings. It is against that background that the court recognises why you might have readily attended at St. Ann Lane in Lochee at the request of your brother, someone you look up to.

The court also places some reliance on the observations of the author of your report that you presented as naïve which she thought was due to immaturity on your part.

The court cannot accept your account of why you attended at the request of your brother that you provided to the social worker, but the court does accept you attended at his request.

Taking the phone call -which is seen being made on CCTV- with the alacrity with which you appear and your immediate conduct when you arrive the only conclusion that the court can draw is that you attended with the intention of assaulting one or more of the girls that were interacting with your brother accordingly, the commission of charge 2 was pre-meditated.

On arrival you did not pause or hesitate, there was not time for you to make enquiry of anyone there which would be exceedingly difficult in any event given your lack of English you simply arrived and commenced your assault on XY aged 13 years.

I am prepared to consider that your culpability is reduced by virtue of your age, your naivety, immaturity and that you were summoned to attend by your older brother, someone you hold in high esteem, but your culpability is still high albeit less than your brothers.

Turning to harm or potential harm.

This was an unpleasant wholly unprovoked assault perpetrated by you upon a child. I appreciate that in the scheme of unprovoked street assaults that this court deals with it was not particularly sustained in nature. The main aggravating feature is it was upon a child.

Police constable Mann who gave evidence at trial spoke of driving in a police van near to St Ann lane, when he was flagged down by your victim XY who he described to be “extremely distressed”. The officer recalled XY saying that her head was sore and she felt dizzy.

Another police officer described your victim as “frantic, crying loudly, it was difficult to make out what she was saying”

XY told the court that after being assaulted she was very scared and ran out into the road screaming.

That concurrence of testimony is eloquent of your young victim suffering psychological trauma because of your attack. I also noted that the police took your victim XY to hospital and whilst there was no medical evidence in the trial your victim described a bump on her head. The crown in your case have libelled injury.

In the circumstances, an unprovoked attack on a child to injury and the evidence I have summarised I am satisfied that there was actual minor injury and psychological trauma because of your assault, I assess harm or potential harm as high and overall seriousness as high.

You like your brother have crossed the custody threshold.

As with your brother you have no previous convictions and are previously of good character.

By contrast to your brother, you expressed embarrassment and regret for your involvement in the assault and did not engage in victim blaming to the same extent as your brother.

Without losing sight of the impact of your offending upon your victim, I am satisfied that like your brother you have been significantly affected by your commission of the offence because of the worldwide commentators predominately on social media which made securing employment difficult and has placed the safety of your family at risk.

The court in your case but for the plea of guilty would have selected a headline sentence of a Community Payback order comprising of unpaid work or other activity for two hundred (200) hours to be completed within 12 months.

This is as a direct alternative to detention.

It will be open to you to complete a proportion of your hours by online learning. I would strongly encourage you to complete the “everyday English” course online. That course will improve your language skills and might allow you to better integrate into our society and in turn improve your employability and reduce your social isolation.

Reduction of sentence

In determining what the final sentence to pass on you should be I shall take into account that you pled guilty and the stage in the proceedings at which you pled guilty.

It is generally understood that those who plead guilty shall receive a reduction of their sentence to reflect any utilitarian benefits to the criminal justice system by their plea. The level of any discount is entirely a matter for the exercise of my discretion.

The earlier a plea of guilty is indicated the greater the discount.

In this case you plead guilty on the first day of trial very much at the ‘‘eleventh hour”, I have given careful consideration as to whether there should be any reduction of your sentence given the stage in the proceedings you indicated your plea.

Importantly, in this case three children gave evidence by live link from a remote site because of your plea the length of time which each child required to give contested evidence was reduced. The length of trial was also reduced accordingly; there were utilitarian benefits to the criminal justice system by virtue of your plea of guilty.

In the circumstances, I intend to reduce the 200 hours of unpaid work or other activity to 180 hours to reflect an appropriate reduction for your plea of guilty.

Are you prepared to carry out the unpaid work or other activity as described?

That is the sentence of the court.