AN EAST Lothian father who took a naked picture of his own daughter and sent the image to a person he believed was a fellow paedophile has been jailed.

The man thought he was chatting to a child abuser online and admitted that he had sexually abused the six-year-old child while he looked after her.

The dad, who lives in a town in East Lothian, also claimed that he was forced to stop the sex attacks on his young daughter due to his "missus” possibly finding out about the abuse.

The offender, who cannot be identified due to legal reasons, was subsequently caught in an online police sting after the man he was messaging turned out to be an undercover police officer.

The dad pleaded guilty to taking his daughter’s picture while she was naked and attempting to distribute the image on a date between 2020 and 2021 when he appeared from custody at Edinburgh Sheriff Court last month.

The man returned to the dock for sentencing on Thursday, where Sheriff Kenneth Campbell KC jailed him for 13 months and placed him on the sex offenders' register for 10 years.

Last month, the court was told that the National Crime Agency contacted Police Scotland to inform them that the father had been identified during one of its online operations.

READ MORE: Dad took naked picture of his daughter, 6, and sent it to 'paedophile'

Fiscal depute Gillian Koren said that the operation was carried out “in relation to child sexual abuse and exploitation” and an undercover officer had been deployed to pose as an adult male with an interest in children under the age of 14.

The court heard that the officer made contact with the accused on the Kik messenger service and the father boasted that he had access to a child, namely his own daughter.

The dad sent the officer an image of a child’s bed with a pair of pants lying on it, which the fiscal said was “provided as proof of his status as a father with access to a child”.

The court heard that the dad then agreed to send a photo of his child from the waist down.

When quizzed by the undercover officer how old the child was, the man replied that she was just six years old.

He also told the officer he “used to [abuse the child] when she was younger” but this was now trickier due to “my missus”.

The man’s family home in the county was subsequently raided by police officers under a warrant and he was arrested.

His horrified partner later told police that the man was “very private with his phone and nobody was allowed to use it”.

Solicitor James McMackin, representing the dad, said that his client’s conduct was “clearly a very disturbing matter” and added that the man had “no contact” with his family since his arrest.