A PERVERT who exposed himself to a schoolgirl on a webcam from another room in his house while he was babysitting her has been spared jail for abusing her and another youngster.

Craig Macmillan’s offences included forcing the girl to look at pornographic images, trying to pay her to perform sex acts on him and repeatedly sexually assaulting another youngster.

Macmillan, 43, got hold of the first youngster’s email address when she was just 14 and hounded her for a video chat.

She repeatedly ignored his requests but eventually accepted and, when the video loaded up, was shocked to see the person she was looking at was sitting in the living room of the house she was in – and was the man who was supposed to be looking after her.

When she closed down the computer, Macmillan raced up the stairs, burst into the room she was in and pounced on her.

Macmillan, a salesman, maintained his innocence during a trial but the jury rejected his lies.

His first victim, who is now 25, said the incident took place at his home in Lyle Crescent, Bishopton, sometime between June 2005 and June 2007.

She said she was on a computer in a bedroom in the house when a ‘friend request’ came through from someone she didn’t know.

She explained: “I accepted and the person started talking to me. They claimed they knew my friends.

“I didn’t believe them at first. It led to them claiming they’d prove I’d recognise them.”

The victim, who can’t be named for legal reasons, said she was then sent a webcam image of a man’s genitals and knew exactly who it was, despite not being able to see his face.

She explained: “I recognised the picture on the wall and the TV in the background.

“There was just myself and Craig in the house at the time.”

“I closed it all down, I didn’t know what to feel.

“I sat for a few minutes and then Mr Macmillan came running up the stairs.

“He ran in to [the] room [I was in]. I was still sitting on the computer chair.

“He came right up behind me and gave me a hug and asked if I was okay.

“I felt as if I just had to get out of there. I went out of the room and out of the house.”

The girl said she did not tell her mum what had happened because she was “under a lot of stress” at the time.

Macmillan also denied repeatedly sexually assaulting another young girl at the same property between September 2008 and August 2013, when she was aged between 10 and 14.

But the jury ruled he regularly exposed himself to her, grabbed her body and touched her private parts between September 2008 and September 2010, and repeatedly grabbed her by the body and touched her privates between December 2010 and August 2013.

Sentence was deferred for background reports and, when Macmillan returned to the dock last week to learn his fate, it was stated that social workers had concluded he was “a high risk of a sexual reconviction”.

However, rather than locking him up, Sheriff James Spy decided that not sending him to jail meant he could keep a better eye on him.

As he placed Macmillan on a probation order for three years and told him to carry out 240 hours of unpaid work, he said: “I am persuaded, on balance, it’s better to keep an eye on you for as long as possible, under the auspices of an order that I can bring back to court, rather than simply send you to jail.”

He also placed Macmillan, who now lives in Beith, on the Sex Offenders’ Register for three years.