In a case that has left a Dundee community shaken and searching for answers, two Bulgarian siblings have finally faced justice for their involvement in a disturbing incident last August. Ilia Belov, 23, was sentenced at Dundee Sheriff Court on Friday after being found guilty of assaulting a 12-year-old girl and behaving in a threatening or abusive manner towards four girls aged between 12 and 14. His sentence includes 18 months of supervision, 300 hours of unpaid work, and he will have his name placed on the sex offenders register for the same period. His younger sister Nadjedzha Belova, 20, had earlier pleaded guilty to assaultinga 13-year-old girl during the same incident in the Lochee area of the city, and was handed 180 hours of unpaid work. The sentences have drawn mixed reactions, with some praising the sheriff’s attempt at rehabilitation while others wonder whether the consequences truly match the gravity of what these young victims endured. But at its heart, this is not merely a legal story of charges and penalties—it is a human story about fear, vulnerability, the quiet courage of a child facing an adult world that suddenly turned hostile, and the long, uneven road to healing that follows such an ordeal.
The courtroom heard details that painted avividand disturbing picture of that summer day. It began, prosecutors said, when Belov made sexual remarks toa 12-year-old girl as she walked with friends toward a bus stop. The girl, now 14, gave evidence via video link, her voice carrying the weight of a memory that had clearly not faded. She recalled that Belov repeatedly said, “Come here, sexy. I will show you how to have a good time.” The words hung in the air, degrading and predatory, aimed at a child who should have been worrying about school or friendships, not fending off unwanted sexual advances from a grown man nearly a decade older. She told the court that his words made her feel “dead angry,” and in that anger she turned around and began shouting at him. That instinctive defiance, understandable as it was, set off a chain of events that would escalate far beyond ugly words. Belov then phoned his sister, who arrived quickly and began attacking a 13-year-old member of the group. In the chaos that followed, Belov pushed the 12-year-old, causing her to fall and hit her head ona metal handrail. The physical injury was real, but the emotional shock of such an attack—at her age, in a public place, by strangers—was perhaps even deeper.
The young victim’s testimony also revealed a detail that made the case even more troubling: after she got back up, she pulled out an axe anda knife thatshe said had been hidden in her waistband for five to ten minutes before the incident. Teh weapons, she explained, were not brought for any planned violence but had been there for reasons she struggled to articulate—perhaps a tragic sign of how unsafe she already felt in her own daily life, even before this encounter. When police arrived minutes later, she told them she had dumped the weapons on a nearby roundabout, where officers later recovered them. This revelation complicates any simple narrative: a child armed with weapons, a young woman arriving to confront verbal harassment, an adult male accused of predatory comments. Yet the sheriff clearly focused on the core wrongdoing: Belov’s sexualised approach to a child and his physical violence when she did not submit. The victim’s decision to arm herself, troubling as it may be, does not erase the fact that she was targeted first. Her actions were those of a frightened, angry child trying to create some semblance of control in a situation where adults had already shown they could not be trusted to protect her.
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Belov, however, told a very different story from the witness box. He denied having made any sexualised remarks to the girls, insisting instead that they had directed derogatory abuse at him, including calling him a “f** migrant.” He painted himself as the victim of xenophobic taunts, a man who merely followed the girls and got caught up in a confrontation he never intended. Sheriff Timothy Niven-Smith was having none of it. After hearing all the evidence, he rejected Belov’s version of events outright, describing it as “neither credible nor reliable.” It was a stark judicial dismissal, one that signaled the court saw through the defendant’s attempt to shift blame onto children, portraying them as aggressors while casting himself as merely reactive. The sheriff’s finding underscores something important: even in moments when people may have exchanged ugly words, an adult’s decision to follow a group of female children, to make sexually charged comments, and to physically push a girl to the ground remains wholly unacceptable. There may have been context, but there was no justification. The girls were minors, walking in a public place; Belov was an adult who chose, as the sheriff put it, to follow them. In doing so, he became the author of their fear, and no amount of counter-allegations couldchange that fundamental truth.
The role of Belova, the sister, adds another layer of sadness to the case. Instead of de-escalating a situation involving her brother and a group of girls, she arrived and immediately became part of the violence, assaultinga 13-year-old. Her guilty plea at least spared her victims the trauma of another trial, but it also meant the public never heard her full account of why she chose to attack someone more than half her age. The sheriff, in sentencing, recognized that both siblings’ actions crossed the threshold for imprisonment. That is significant: the law, at least on paper, treats these offenses as serious enough to warrant custody. But Sheriff Niven-Smith decided not to impose prison sentences. He cited their youth—Belov 23, Belova 20—their work history, and the fact that neither appeared to have previous or ongoing offences. Instead, he imposed what he called an alternative sentence “primarily considered rehabilitation.” For Belov, that means 18 months of supervision—a period during which he will be monitored, required to attend programs, and, presumably, confront the sexual attitudes that led him to view a 12-year-old as a legitimate target for his remarks. The sex offenders register requirement, though lasting only 18 months, will shadow him, a permanent reminder that society regards such conduct with abhorrence. For Belova, the 180 hours of unpaid work offers her the chance to repay the community she damaged, thoughone as hard not to wonder whether scrubbing graffiti or sorting donations can truly teach someone the weight of assaulting a child.
Sentencing Belov, Sheriff Niven-Smith described the events as having an “inevitable” quality once Belov chose to follow the girls. It was a curious but revealing word, suggesting that the moment he made that decision, a violent or threatening outcome became almost assured. The sheriff also determined that Belov’s comments toward the youngest victim had a “significant sexual aspect” and were made for “sexual gratification.” That is a brutal conclusion to hear in open court: that an adult derive pleasure from speaking toa child in that way. Yet the sheriff was also careful to note that Belov’s actions were “not pre-planned or premeditated.” This distinction seemed designed to justify his move away from custody: he was not a man who had stalked children over weeks, but someone who acted on a vile impulse in a single moment. Still, one might argue, the fact that he had to be found guilty following a trial—not through any confession or acceptance of responsibility—makes rehabilitation a harder sell. How do you reform someone who still maintains his innocence, who told the court he was the real victim? The sheriff’s gamble is that supervision and programming can do what punishment alone might not: change not just behavior but the underlying thinking. Whether that gamble pays off depends largely on Belov’s own willingness to engage, and that is a question no sentence can guarantee.
Ultimately, this case leaves us with more than just legal outcomes. It leaves us with the image of a 12-year-old girl, her head bloodied beside a metal handrail, who then reached for weapons she had hidden on her body—weapons she felt she needed to navigate her own life. It leaves us with four girls, now aged between 14 and 16, who will carry the memory of that day, of being followed, harassed, and attacked by people who should have known better. It leaves us with a Bulgarian brother and sister, young themselves, now marked by criminal records and public shame, their futures constrained by decisions made in a single afternoon. And it leaves us with a sheriff who had to weigh the demand for punishment against the possibility of redemption, choosing rehabilitation even at the risk of public criticism. There is no clean moral here, no satisfying ending where all wrongs are righted. Justice, in this case, is messy and partial. But perhaps that is the honest truth of most human harm: it can never be fully undone, only acknowledged, repaired as well as possible, and remembered. The girls showed tremendous courage in coming forward and testifying, particularly the youngest, who faced her abuser during trial and told her story despite the emotional cost. Their voices mattered; they were heard. And while no sentence can erase what happened, the fact that those voices were believed—that a sheriff looked ata man’s denials and called them lies—offers a small, fragile kind of justice. For the community in Dundee, forging forward means holding both truths: that children can be hurt in broad daylight, and that they can also be brave enough to seek justice, carry on, and eventually, perhaps, begin to heal.
