SENTENCING STATEMENTS

Upon sentencing, Lord Scott made the following remarks:

"Andrew McAdam, you have pled guilty to 9 charges involving the sexual abuse and exploitation of very young children, including recording and distributing extreme images which were captured while abuse was perpetrated by you and encouraged by you but perpetrated by another.

The charges span a period of 18 months from March 2023 to September 2024.

They involve you having willingly and knowingly and without any coercion engaged in a course of extreme paedophilic conversations which led quickly to the sharing of images and the direct abuse of real children available to you and the other person.

Although all 9 charges are serious examples of the particular crimes, the most serious by far are charges 1, 4, 5 and 6 which involve the conspiracy to sexually exploit and abuse two young children. Some conspiracies go no further than the agreement to commit a crime before a change of mind or detection but this wicked conspiracy was made real when you sexually abused one child over a period of 5 months and, in charge 6, when you incited and encouraged the rape of another child. All of this was entirely for your own gratification.

The court is well aware of the serious and lasting impact that this sort of sexual abuse and exploitation can have on a child.

In any event, in this case I have seen the impact statement prepared on behalf of your direct victim, who I will refer to as 'CD', completed by his parents only a month ago. Even now, he is only 3 years old. At the time he was an infant of between 12 and 18 months old. His parents describe the trauma endured by their son and the physical and mental effects on him, known and as yet unknown. The profound and continuing impacts on that family are hard to have to read. The full effects of your betrayal of trust may never be known but are sure to be permanent. You have severely damaged their ability ever again to trust someone with their son. They feel shame although it was you, not they, who abused their son. You have caused that family to revisit treasured memories which are forever tainted by your presence at the time or in those places. They describe it as 'constantly feeling like you are hiding a secret, like you’re screaming inside but you can’t tell anyone how you feel'.

They describe financial harm caused by trying to cope with what you did in the way that is best for their son, although the physical and, especially, the psychological and emotional harm, realised and potential, weighs much more heavily with them.

I will not read what they said in full but think it appropriate to quote from some of their powerful and moving statement:

'It has been just over two years since the perpetrator was arrested and every time we have been officially contacted about the case we have received additional information that the offending has been worse than we previously believed. In each instance, this is because the perpetrator had only admitted to offences once evidence had been presented that made it difficult or impossible to continue in his denial. This has been incredibly distressing and made processing the situation incredibly difficult, as every few months we have been thrown back to the moment of being told and left to grapple with new painful details. We dread phone calls from unknown numbers and always fear a police car on the street is waiting for us with more bad news. This has been profoundly unsettling and destabilising and has made planning for the future incredibly difficult. We hope that CD has been shielded from the worst of this and will not have somehow internalised a sense that something terrible is always waiting around the corner, but it is still too soon to tell…

He should have been safe but he wasn’t, and we will forever carry the guilt and shame of leaving our baby in the care of a predator…

The perpetrator has made CD’s parents lives a living torture, where even though our every instinct is to protect and keep CD away from further harm or hurt – we have to be the ones to inflict the damage of this knowledge, these crimes, onto him. It is a cruelty we will have to bear for our entire lives. The potential impact of his finding out what happened in the wrong way is catastrophic. It is like holding a bomb with the power to completely destroy your child’s life if it is detonated at the wrong moment. It is terrifying not knowing the impact that this will have, not knowing if our approach to telling him will be the right one…

The weight of it is an ever-present shadow whenever CD has a physiological or emotional issue, and will continue to be so as he grows up and inevitably makes mistakes or choices we disagree with at any stage of his life - we will forever question if the crimes he faced at such a young age and their impact, direct or indirectly, will have contributed.

There is no eloquent way to summarise the emotional and psychological impact of what the perpetrator has done, not only to CD but to his wider family. It is life changing. It is a constant struggle. It is utterly devastating.'

Their words should hang over you forever.

You are 36 years old and, at the time, you were aged between 32 and 34. You have no previous convictions.

Before passing sentence, I asked for a Justice Social Work Report. This was with a view to finding out more about your background and any other relevant information, as well as any risk you pose to the public.

You take limited responsibility for your offending, deflecting, minimising and denying the full extent of your involvement. Despite having completed the 10 session groupwork with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, you have demonstrated limited insight and victim empathy, despite having been in a similar position yourself. You focus on yourself as a victim, seeing yourself as having been groomed into this offending rather than acknowledging your own responsibility. You appear almost to have excused yourself for behaviour which seems to have been about satisfying your own selfish needs ahead of a single thought for the child. You have shown no convincing or meaningful remorse.

You must understand that I will proceed to sentence on the basis of the agreed narrative and not the self-serving version of denial and deflection which you have offered in the report.

I note your own mental health issues, including depression and the effects of the traumatic experience you suffered in your early 20s. This is something you have apparently addressed recently in therapy. If anything, that is an experience which should have ensured that you would never subject another person, never mind an infant child, to serious sexual abuse and harm. It appears to me that the apology you say you wish to offer will offer nothing – no comfort, no closure and no barrier to the enormous damage your selfish behaviour has caused and will continue to cause.

An extended sentence is indicated owing to the assessed risk of serious harm to the public for what is rightly described as 'a pattern of sexually abusive behaviour involving children.'

You have accepted responsibility for your actions, albeit with the minimisation and denial I have mentioned, and have acted on this acceptance with a plea of guilty. Today, Mr Brannigan has emphasised your acceptance of guilt and previously having been a victim in similar circumstances. He has said everything that can be said on your behalf.

In summary, I have considered all that is said in the Justice Social Work Report and all that has been said today on your behalf by your counsel.

The charges you have each pled guilty to are serious.

Charges 1, 4, 5, 6 and 9 carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.

Charges 2 and 7 carry a maximum sentence of 10 years imprisonment.

Charge 3 carries a maximum sentence of 5 years imprisonment.

Charge 8 carries a maximum penalty of 6 months imprisonment.

I consider that the harm you have caused and to which you have contributed is extremely high. Culpability is also extremely high. None of this was spur of the moment. It required entirely voluntary knowing acts in carrying out sexual abuse as well as making, seeking, obtaining and distributing images each of which represents appalling sexual abuse and exploitation of young and very young children.

In all the circumstances, I consider a custodial sentence to be the only appropriate disposal. That takes into account the sentencing purposes of punishment, expressing disapproval of serious offending behaviour and deterring you and others from becoming involved in child sexual abuse as well as the use and distribution of indecent images involving the sexual abuse of children.

Having reflected carefully on all of the circumstances, in particular the serious nature of the charges and the insights in the justice social work report, in my judgement the normal period of licence would not be enough to protect the public from serious harm from you. Accordingly, I consider that, given the gravity of the offences and the terms of the risk assessment, the custodial sentence should be by way of an extended sentence. 

You will be under licence on conditions fixed by the Scottish Ministers. If, during the extension period of the sentence, you fail to comply with the conditions of your licence it may be revoked by the Scottish Ministers and you may be returned to custody for a further period.

While you appear on 9 separate charges, I consider that they are part of the same offending and, accordingly, I intend to impose a cumulo sentence, that is a single sentence to deal with the 9 offences you have pled guilty to. In view of the fact that I am imposing such a sentence, I require to say what the sentences would have been on each charge individually.

Had I been sentencing you separately on each charge, the starting points would have been custodial terms as follows:

Charge 1 – 10 years

Charge 2 – 18 months

Charge 3 – 12 months

Charge 4 (the charge involving direct sexual abuse) – 6 years

Charge 5 – 6 years

Charge 6 – (the charge involving inciting another to rape a young child) 10 years

Charge 7 – 2 years

Charge 8 – 5 months

Charge 9 – 12 months

Adding these together would give a total of 37 years 11 months which would plainly be excessive and there is some overlap between charge 1 on the one hand and charges 4, 5 and 6 on the other as they are, in effect, the realisation of the conspiracy in charge 1. Those charges would therefore run together in any event, giving a total of 10 years, meaning that the total would have been 15 years 11 months. Having regard to the fact that this was, in effect, a single course of conduct, I will take as a cumulo starting point a custodial term of 14 years.

Although you pled guilty at the preliminary hearing, I note that you first appeared on petition in respect of some of these charges on 9 September 2024. A plea of guilty was offered using the procedure in terms of section 76 of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995 for early pleas of guilty but it was conditional and the most serious charges had not been brought at that time.

I must and do recognise that there is a utilitarian value in your pleas – that is primarily that there was a saving of court time. This is a significant aspect of mitigation.

I will therefore reduce the relevant cumulo starting point by approximately 25%.

The sentence is a cumulo extended sentence of 14 years with a custodial term of 10 years 6 months and an extension period of 3 years 6 months.

The sentence will date from 10 September 2026.

As a consequence of this sentence, you will be subject to notification requirements indefinitely.

In addition, I need to consider whether to make a non harassment order in relation to your victim. Having heard from the Crown and your counsel, I will make such an order.

The conditions of that order are as follows:

That you must not approach, contact, communicate directly or indirectly with CD or attempt to approach, contact or communicate with CD. The order will be for an indeterminate period and will commence today.”

27 October 2026