Convicted sex offender from Knightswood spared jail after neglecting three children

A convicted sex offender convicted of wilfully neglecting three school children over the two and a half years they were in his care has been spared jail. Derek Carrick, 42, allowed the girls to get so hungry that one was forced to eat cat food.

The youngest child told how she ate the bristles from her toothbrush because there was no food.

Carrick’s home in Knightswood was filthy, and smelly with cat litter overflowing, and dirty dishes, during the time he looked after them.

The youngest girl’s bedroom had a cardboard box covering part of the window with bits of toast lying around and food trampled in the floor.

The eldest girl said was bullied at school for the way she looked and smelled, and that there was no sanitary products for her to use.

Jurors heard the middle child used to ask to take leftover snacks home from school.

Carrick was unanimously convicted at Glasgow Sheriff Court of wilfully neglecting and ill-treating the girls then 10, nine and three, between February 2011 and October 2013.

It emerged he has a previous conviction from 1997 of using lewd and libidinous practices toward children.

Sheriff Martin Jones QC imposed a "direct alternative" to a jail sentence.

He said there was no medical evidence to suggest the children suffered injury or were malnourished but told him: "You must accept your conduct has had some detrimental effect on their welfare."

The youngest of the three girls, now nine, gave evidence that was recorded before the trial started and played to the jury.

During it, she said the house was dirty and smelly in particular the living room where Carrick slept.

She said: “There was clothes everywhere, and boxes everywhere in the living room on the couch and everything, it was just cat litter everywhere.”

Carrick would often “slap” her if she woke him up too early, or wanted the light on because she was scared of the dark.

The nine year-old: “I would try and eat my toothbrush I was that hungry, I would take off the bristles and eat them.”

The eldest girl, now 18, was asked during her evidence if she ate breakfast and said “most of the time, no” and that “there wasn’t anything there to eat”.

She said: “Most of the time there wasn’t anything there and if there was, it wasn’t enough”.

Procurator fiscal depute Ruth Ross-Davie asked: “On occasion when there was no food, what did you do?”

She replied: “There was a few occasions I ate cat food.”

Asked if she told Carrick, the girl said: “I mentioned it a few times, his response was he didn’t have any money, it wasn’t his fault.”

She said the cat was kept in the kitchen and could go “weeks and weeks on end” without it.

Jurors heard the bathroom in the flat smelled, and the bath had bugs in it.

The witness said: “I tried not to spend much time in there.”

The teenager said there was no sanitary products for her to use and Carrick didn't buy any.

She told the court: “There was never really anything like that in the house.”

Defence counsel Margaret Breslin said: "On any view this was a household that was living in poverty."

She said there was no evidence of any after effects for any of the children.

Carrick was handed a Community Payback Order - with two years supervision and 200 hundred hours of unpaid work within six month.