Man who sought date with boy jailed

Fegan was jsentenced at the High Court in Edinburgh

A man has been sentenced to nine months in prison and put on the sex offenders register after making a date with a 15-year-old boy on a gay chat line.

However, Paul Fegan, 22, was expected to be released immediately because he had already served time in custody, despite being regarded as a danger to the public.

The High Court in Edinburgh heard how Fegan, from Ferniehill in the city, met the boy in Glasgow last year and then boarded a train for Edinburgh.

But the boy, who attends a special school in Shropshire, later panicked and ran to a train guard for protection.

The pair boarded a train in Glasgow

The boy said he was travelling north to meet Fegan but his money ran out in Carlisle. Fegan then arranged for a ticket to get the youth to Glasgow.

When they met and travelled to Edinburgh from Glasgow's Queen Street Station, the boy panicked.

He told how he asked to go to the toilet and then spent several minutes locked inside the cubicle. After sneaking out he ran down the train until he met the ticket collector and driver.

"I was shaking like mad. I was crying. I was trying to get off the train," he said.

The boy sat in a first class seat and was watched by a ticket collector until the train arrived at Waverley Station where the police were called.

Danger to public

Fegan was originally charged with abducting the boy but this was later dropped when he pleaded guilty to defying an earlier court order banning him from being alone with youngsters under 16.

He also admitted three minor indecent assaults on teenage boys.

Sentencing Fegan to nine months, High Court judge Lady Cosgrove said: "He clearly has psychiatric or psychological problems which make him, in some way, a danger to the public."

She ordered Fegan to be kept under strict supervision for four years when he is released from prison, stressing that her concern was to "provide as much protection for the community" as possible.

Fegan has a previous conviction for offences against young boys. In September 1999 he was sentenced to 200 hours community service for keeping a 10-year-old boy prisoner in his house.