A CONVICTED sex offender who neglected three school children over the two and a half years they were in his care has been spared jail.

Derek Carrick, 42, allowed the girls to get so hungry that one was forced to eat cat food.

The youngest child told how she ate the bristles from her toothbrush because there was no food.

Carrick’s Kirkton Avenue home, in Knightswood, was filthy and smelly – with cat litter overflowing and dirty dishes everywhere as he looked after them.

The youngest girl’s bedroom had a cardboard box covering part of the window with bits of toast lying around and food trampled in the floor.

The eldest girl said she was bullied at school for the way she looked and smelled, and that there were no sanitary products for her to use.

Jurors heard the middle child used to ask to take leftover snacks home from school.

Carrick, of Holehouse Drive, Knightswood, was unanimously convicted at Glasgow Sheriff Court of wilfully neglecting and ill-treating the girls then 10, nine and three, between February 2011 and October 2013.

It emerged he has a previous conviction from 1997 of using lewd and libidinous practices toward children.

Sheriff Martin Jones QC imposed a “direct alternative” to a jail sentence.

He was sentenced to a community payback order with two years supervision and 200 hours unpaid work within six months.

He said there was no medical evidence to suggest the children suffered injury or were malnourished, but told him: “You must accept your conduct has had some detrimental effect on their welfare.”

The youngest of the three girls, now nine, gave evidence recorded before the trial started and played to the jury.

In it, she said the house was dirty and smelly in particular the living room where Carrick slept.

She said: “There were clothes everywhere, and boxes everywhere in the living room on the couch and everything, it was just cat litter everywhere.”

Carrick would often “slap” her if she woke him up too early, or wanted the light on because she was scared of the dark.

The nine year-old said: “I would try and eat my toothbrush I was that hungry, I would take off the bristles and eat them.”

The eldest girl, now 18, was asked during her evidence if she ate breakfast and said “most of the time, no”, and that “there wasn’t anything there to eat”.

Defence counsel Margaret Breslin said: “On any view this was a household that was living in poverty.”

She said there was no evidence of any after effects for any of the children.

A spokesman for the NSPCC said it was a harrowing and appalling case of neglect, which highlights how children are completely reliant on the adults whose responsibility it is to care for them.

He added: “We must all be alert to the signs that a child may need help and be ready to take action to protect them. Anyone with concerns about a child can contact the NSPCC Helpline for help and advice.

“NSPCC Scotland works in schools and in the community to prevent neglect and abuse with its Speak Out Stay Safe service.”

The NSPCC Helpline is available 24/7 for free on 0808 800 5000.