A DUNBAR man who contacted two children through Facebook and asked one of them to send him indecent pictures of herself has been placed on the sex offenders’ register.

Keith Mowat made friends with a 13-year-old Oxfordshire schoolgirl on the social media site and the pair began sending each other messages.

A relative of the girl found out about the chats and confronted Mowat by sending him an online message telling him to stop the contact.

As a result of this, Mowat fell out with the young girl he had been messaging and told her he would post their conversations to a public page in a bid to embarrass her.

The matter was then reported to the police in England after the girl told her father what was going on.

But on January 1 this year, Mowat contacted the girl again by sending her a message wishing her a happy New Year.

She again told her father, who subsequently texted Mowat to tell him to stop contacting the child and the police in Scotland were informed.

Mowat, 34, also texted a second girl, who was just 14 at the time, last year claiming he had obtained her number from a mutual friend.

He began complimenting the child on her looks and asked her to send him “images” of herself, which she took to mean pictures of her private parts.

The girl told her mother of the contact and the police were called in to investigate.

Officers attended Mowat’s home at Lammermuir Crescent, where he told them he believed the girls to be 17 and denied anything to do with a sexual nature.

During a hearing last Tuesday, Sheriff Donald Corke placed Mowat on the sex offenders’ register for a term still to be decided and deferred full sentence to January 30.

Mowat admitted to contacting a 13-year-old girl by text, uttering threats to her that he would post conversations online and threatening her with violence on various occasions at his home address between May 1, 2016, and January 1 this year.

He also pleaded guilty to repeatedly making remarks of a sexual nature to a 14-year-old girl and repeatedly asking her to send him photographs of her body on various occasions from his home address between June 19 and 23 last year.