SENTENCING STATEMENTS

I have also had regard to the statutory presumption against imprisonment in sections 204(2) of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995. That presumption requires careful consideration of every available community disposal. However, it does not prevent imprisonment where no other method of dealing with the offender is appropriate.

The purposes of sentence which carry particular weight here are punishment, protection of children and the public through deterrence, and the clear expression of society’s grave disapproval of your conduct. Rehabilitation is relevant, particularly given the low assessed risk of reoffending, but it cannot by itself meet the demands of this exceptionally serious offence.

The offence and the essential facts

You pled guilty on indictment to a charge that, on various occasions between 7 September 2023 and 26 August 2024, while acting as a registered childminder and having charge or care of numerous children under 16, you wilfully neglected, abandoned and exposed those children in a manner likely to cause them unnecessary suffering or injury to health. You offered child-minding services for far more children than you could reasonably care for at the same time, and left children alone within your childminding premises.

As a registered childminder, you were permitted to care for a maximum of eight children under 12, including no more than three under primary school age and one under one. On 26 August 2024 you had 27 children in your care: 15 under 12, 10 under primary school age and two under one. The scale of the excess was extreme.

Your conduct was discovered only because some parents became suspicious that their sons, then aged three and one, were not accompanying you on school runs. They watched you leave with other children and went to your home. They heard a child screaming hysterically. Five school-age children were waiting in the garden without an adult, having been told by you to remain there. The front door was unlocked. Inside, a child aged about two or three was crying beneath the kitchen table and had to be lifted and comforted. Upstairs was a group of very young children, including the parents’ sons. Two children were strapped in pushchairs. The children were described as obviously distressed. You had left children without adult supervision for at least 30 minutes then, and doorbell footage showed that this was the second occasion that same day, on which children had been left alone.

Your concealment was systematic. Parents were excluded from the house and required to text before arriving. A radio was playing loudly. Younger children were kept upstairs and older children in the utility room, sometimes with the door closed and instructions not to emerge while parents were present. False explanations were given that other adults or childminders were in the house. Diaries and photographs created a misleading picture of activities and meals. Children taken to a Christmas party were photographed with Santa; parents of children left behind received a generic image calculated to suggest that their children had also attended. When Early Years Officers visited, only two of the nine children then in your care were visible.

Seriousness

3.1 Culpability

Your culpability was very high. You were an experienced, registered professional with approximately 30 years in childcare. You knew the regulatory limits and the reasons for them. Your qualifications and experience meant that you understood the developmental vulnerability of babies and young children, the need for constant supervision, and the obvious risks created by leaving them without an adult.

Your conduct involved planning and premeditation. It required you repeatedly to organise the children into concealed groups, to arrange outings with only some of them, to instruct children to remain silent or out of sight, to control parents’ access to the house.

You provided false or misleading accounts of where children had been and what they had eaten. This was a deliberate disregard for their welfare and a gross abuse of the position of trust which enabled your offending.

You may not have intended that a child should be injured. But you knowingly created conditions in which injury, terror and neglect were obvious and foreseeable. Your own words to the social worker, “God knows what could have happened to those kids”, recognise the very point. You knew the risks and continued.

3.2 Actual harm

The actual harm was grave and widespread. Babies and young children were left without the adult care their age required. Reports included children returning home desperately thirsty; clothing remaining implausibly clean despite diary entries recording messy meals; children saying they had not received the meals recorded and had instead been given biscuits or sweets; children with saturated or soiled nappies; dry faeces on their underwear; wet clothing after the children had urinated on themselves; and unexplained scratches or bite marks without accident reports. The reasonable inference is that you were not present to prevent incidents or explain how these injuries occurred.

Children are also reported to have become distrustful of care providers and less willing to approach adults for help. One child developed a heightened sense of responsibility for the safety of his younger siblings. One child repeatedly spoke of being strapped into a buggy for a long time. He said that, when he tried to slip underneath the straps, they became caught around his neck, and that another child helped to release him. His parent reported that he returned home with redness around his neck.

The victim impact statements also concern a child with significant developmental disabilities who was unable to communicate verbally and who had previously experienced neglect. Her vulnerabilities substantially limited her ability to describe what had happened, limiting her ability to seek help or protect herself.

The parents also describe profound effects upon them. These include disturbed sleep or insomnia, anxiety, low mood or depression, loss of weight, intrusive recollections, loss of confidence in their own judgement, and an inability to trust new childcare providers. Some required counselling or therapy, took unpaid leave, reduced their working hours, lost income, changed employment, or withdrew from work involving child-protection cases.

Several parents describe enduring guilt or self-blaming because they entrusted their children to you, notwithstanding that they had relied upon your registered status and the appearance of a reliable professional service. Let me be clear, that guilt or self-blame is misplaced.

Parents selected a registered and apparently reputable childminder, relied upon professional regulation, and were deliberately deceived. Responsibility for that betrayal rests with you, not with them.

The harm reaches beyond individual families. Confidence in childminding and in the institutions responsible for safeguarding children has been damaged. The Justice Social Work Report properly records that the aftermath has raised serious questions about regulatory competence and caused likely erosion of public trust. That societal harm is a real consequence of the scale and concealment of your offending.

3.3 Potential harm

The potential for further and catastrophic harm was enormous. Infants and toddlers were left in an unlocked house without an adult. Some were strapped in pushchairs.

Other young children were expected to wait outside or move between school and the house without supervision. Any child could have choked, fallen, escaped, suffered a medical emergency, been injured by another child, encountered a fire or other household danger, or been unable to obtain help.

That no child sustained a proved catastrophic physical injury was but good fortune. It does not diminish the seriousness of the risk you deliberately created.

Aggravating factors

I have not counted again as aggravations, your professional knowledge, planning, the vulnerability of the children, the gross breach of trust, actual harm or potential harm, all already used to assess seriousness. There are, however, also distinct aggravating features.

The multiplicity of victims was exceptional: more than 50 identified children from over 40 families appear to have used your services throughout the period. What we do specifically know is that 27 children were in your care on the final day. 

The offending occurred in the course of a paid childminding business. Whatever difficulty you had obtaining payment from some parents, or, to whatever extent you were unable to say no to childcare requests, you accepted children in numbers radically exceeding safe and permitted limits in a commercial setting and while worried about money.

These factors place your offending firmly at the highest end of the range I have identified.

Mitigation and personal circumstances

However, I also need to take full account of the mitigation. You are 55 and have no previous convictions. Before the libel you had cared for children for about 29 years without any established wrongdoing.

You resigned your registration. The loss of your profession, home, relationship and employment has been substantial, although loss of the childminding career was the inevitable consequence of your own conduct.

I take account of your past and current financial stress, unstable accommodation and the effect which custody will have upon you and your caring family. I also recognise the pressures associated with your father’s illness without intruding upon his private circumstances.

The psychological report describes your conduct as a serious 'error of judgment' and focuses principally upon 26 August 2024. That does not adequately reflect the agreed facts. The offence was a sustained course of wilful criminal conduct involving many children, repeated abandonment, concealment and deception. The background may help explain aspects of your vulnerability and treatment needs, but it neither excuses your offending nor materially reduces its objective seriousness.

I have read the personal references. They describe kindness, warmth, generosity, hard work, compassion, affection for children, remorse and the support available to you. Several writers candidly acknowledge the seriousness of the offence. One document is incomplete and retains the placeholder '[Full Name]', which limits its evidential value. The references are relevant to your previous character and prospects of rehabilitation.

They cannot, however, reconcile, excuse or outweigh your proved conduct.

Indeed, an important feature of this case is that a person capable of presenting to friends, colleagues and parents as caring and trustworthy, used that very appearance to maintain the confidence of parents, which allowed the offending to continue.

Sentencing range and selection of sentence

Taking the very high culpability, grave actual harm, extraordinary potential for catastrophic harm, I assess the appropriate sentencing range as between two to four years’ imprisonment.

I have considered every available alternative. The Justice Social Work Report assesses you as suitable for a Community Payback Order with up to 300 hours of unpaid work, supervision and a conduct requirement, together with a Restriction of Liberty Order. Such measures could punish, restrict and assist rehabilitation. But they cannot adequately mark the gravity of a sustained, calculated and concealed course of wilful neglect and abandonment of numerous inherently vulnerable children. Nor could they provide the necessary denunciation and general deterrence to those entrusted professionally with children. A financial penalty would be still less adequate.

I therefore conclude, notwithstanding the statutory presumption and your lack of previous imprisonment, that no method other than custody is appropriate.

A non-custodial disposal would fail to reflect the seriousness of the offence, would fail properly to punish, and would fail to express society’s grave disapproval of your conduct. The restrictions and interventions available in the community do not meet those requirements.

Within the range, and after balancing the aggravations against all mitigation, I have concluded that a fair and proportionate headline sentence is one of three years’ imprisonment. That is the mid-point of the identified range.

It reflects your previous good character, age, remorse, engagement with therapy, low risk of reoffending and difficult personal circumstances. It is no more severe than is necessary to achieve the purposes of sentencing.

Discount for the guilty plea

You pled guilty at an early plea diet on 6 October 2026. This avoided the need for a trial, although the agreed narrative required discussion. I shall allow the full discount of one third.

The headline sentence of three years’ imprisonment is therefore reduced to 2 years imprisonment to run from today.

Referral

A referral will also be made to the Scottish Ministers under Part 1 of the Protection of Vulnerable Groups (Scotland) Act 2007 for consideration of whether you should be included in the lists of persons unsuitable to work with children or protected adults."

6 November 2026