A sheriff yesterday criticised Crown Office officials for downgrading charges against a child molester.
Sheriff Tom Scott vented his frustration after legal constraints prevented him from jailing businessman Donald Taylor for more than three months.
He was backed by the mother of the victims, aged seven and nine, who declared: ''We have been badly let down by the system.''
Taylor had originally been charged on indictment, and faced a maximum sentence of three years.
But Sheriff Scott told him: ''The Crown Office chose to change the complaint to a summary one - and subsequently the maximum I am allowed to impose is three months.
''If my hands were not tied, I would have imposed a term substantially longer than that.''
Taylor, 54, the former South American sales executive for Clydebank-based John Brown Engineering, had insisted at Dumbarton Sheriff Court that it was a rule of his house that he was never alone with young females.
He claimed that was the regime in which he and his South American-born wife had been brought up.
But he was found guilty of groping the private parts of the girls at his bungalow in Henderland Road, Bearsden, near Glasgow.
The older girl said that after interfering with her on one occasion, Taylor warned her: ''Don't tell anyone because I will go to prison.'' She said that he had given her #20 in an envelope to help her save up for a trip to Disneyland.
Defence lawyer Paul Crozier argued that Taylor should not be jailed because he had been ''punished by the public''.
The court heard that Taylor's dentist wife Miriam had fled to her native Colombia with their daughter.
The victims' mother said: ''It was clear that the sheriff did as much as he could and our whole family shares his frustration that this man did not get put away for much longer. It is stomach-churning to think that he will be out and about again in a few weeks.
''We will never be able to forgive him - not only for what he did, but also for the fact that as a result of his lies, my wee girls had to go through the ordeal of giving evidence in court.''
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