A LATE night train sex pest has been banned from contact with young people aged under 18.
Creepy Mark Farrelly made a grab for a 16-year-old girl and demanded she kiss him.
He then made sexual remarks towards a male passenger aged 17 on the same train route a few weeks later.
Prosecutors said he’d caused the youngsters “distress and alarm”.
Farrelly, of Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, was placed on the sex offenders’ register for three years on Thursday.
He appeared at Airdrie Sheriff Court on his 55th birthday after admitting that he acted in a threatening or abusive manner and made indecent comments.
Sheriff Joseph Hughes described it as “significant sexual misbehaviour”.
The girl and a friend aged 14 were on a train going from Motherwell to Coatbridge around 10pm on August 18 last year.
Calum Frame, prosecuting, said: “The only other person in the carriage was Farrelly who approached and sat beside them.
“He appeared to be intoxicated. He told the older girl she was pretty and asked for a kiss, but she refused.
“She shook his hand to appease him but he tried to pull her towards him. He was very animated and touched her repeatedly on her chest area.
“The girls stood up and walked away. Farrelly shouted ‘I only wanted a f*****g kiss’ before he got off the train at Whifflet.”
The second incident happened on an evening train on the same route on October 1 last year.
Farrelly, who had been drinking again, sat directly across from a youth and started chatting before making comments of a sexual nature, leaving the 17-year-old feeling “uncomfortable”.
Farrelly has a previous conviction for directing sexual remarks towards an adult woman.
Defence lawyer Luke O’Curry conceded his behaviour with the teenagers was unacceptable, but added: “This is not a sexual predator prowling the railways but a drunk man who makes inappropriate conversation choices.
“These were chance encounters and what he said and how he behaved were entirely wrong.”
Sheriff Hughes made the ban on contact with under 18s a condition of a three-year community payback order.
This will also include addiction counselling and attendance at a programme for sex offenders.
Farrelly must also do 200 hours of unpaid community work.
The sheriff also imposed three-year non-harassment orders in respect of the teenagers.
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