Crown appeals baby rapist sentence

James Taylor was jailed for five years

The Crown Office has lodged an appeal against the five-year jail sentence imposed on a man who raped a baby girl.

James Taylor, 43, from Grangemouth, admitted raping the 13-month-old girl and taking pictures while doing so.

His sentence was attacked by children's charities, who said they had expected Taylor to be jailed for life.

The Crown can only appeal the sentence, which was imposed by Lord Reed earlier this month, on the grounds that it is unduly lenient.

Lord Advocate Colin Boyd QC had asked for a report into the case.

Child pornography

Taylor had admitted a number of offences which were committed between August 1998 and December last year.

Lord Reed said he would have been jailed for much longer had it not been for a psychologist's report which suggested there was a low risk of him reoffending.

The father-of-three was caught after the Metropolitan Police's child protection group was tipped off that he had been posting child pornography on the internet.

A powerful computer, CDs and floppy disks containing 2,280 indecent images of children were discovered during a raid on his home.

Most of the images had been downloaded from the internet, but computer specialists were able to recover some horrific images of Taylor's own making which he had tried to delete.

They included graphic pictures of Taylor himself raping the baby girl, whose age at the time was estimated to be 13 months.