A youth coach with links to Celtic who sexually assaulted boys from a football academy has been jailed for 18 months.
Mark McAuley, 33, had insisted nothing “sinister” had gone on when he shared a bed with the boys. But Inverness sheriff Eilidh Macdonald said he was “not naive but deliberate and calculated”.
McAuley, of Dunfermline, was convicted over offences carried out between 2016 and 2019 in Dunfermline, Edinburgh and Tain. He ran a soccer group in Tain and had links with Dunfermline Athletic, Alloa Athletic and Celtic.
Ordering him to be placed on the Sex Offender’s Register for 10 years, she told him: “You professed to be a father figure and a friend to these boys but you were their abuser.
“You displayed typical grooming behaviour by targeting the most vulnerable and it was sexually motivated. The effect of your behaviour has been damaging for them.
“There was a significant breach of trust and you have displayed a lack of remorse or recognition for what you have done. It was a course of conduct pursued by you over a period of time when these boys were entrusted in your care by their parents.”
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