Pagan caught performing naked ritual with teenage girl avoids being put on sex register

A pagan who stripped naked for a candle-lit ritual with a girl of 15 in her underwear has avoided being placed on the sex offenders’ register. Michael Smith, 46, was fined £335 for breach of the peace over the incident with the underage youngster, who was wearing her bra and pants and a black cloak. A sheriff decided, with some hesitation, that the sexual element of the crime was not big enough to put Smith on the perverts’ list.

But Smith’s ex-partner Emma Daniels, who found him with the schoolgirl, said: “I don’t know what the judge was thinking. It was surely an act of indecency. He’ll never be back over my doorstep, that’s for sure. He’s not of the same mindset as everyone else. I knew he was a pagan but I thought he was just going into the garden at night and praying to nature or whatever.” Fort William Sheriff Court heard the girl was interested in Smith’s rituals.



He told her they were usually done naked. She did not want to strip completely but undressed to her underwear and put on the cloak. Smith took off all his clothes. He was dressed only in a black belt, with a pagan symbol called a pentagram hanging from it, when Emma walked in. He and the girl were cross-legged in the living room on either side of the coffee table, which had candles on it. Smith was performing a love spell ritual to help the girl get a boyfriend.

Emma kicked forester Smith out of her house in Fort William after the incident in the early hours of Saturday. He plans to move in with his sister in Northumberland. Sheriff Noel McPartlin said it was “hard to escape the view that him being naked in the room with the girl might suggest a sexual element”. He added: “I am a bit hesitant but I do not think the sexual element is significant enough to justify placing him on the register.”