A BULGARIAN man has admitted he burst into a female public toilet cubicle in Port Glasgow intending to film two schoolchildren having sex.

Mihail Iliev, 32, said he had his phone video camera ready to capture a 14-year-old girl and her 15-year-old boyfriend.

Iliev stated in court that the youngsters had been 'behaving abnormally' and he thought they were either having sex or hiding a dead body.

Through an interpreter, he declared: "I wanted to take footage."

Iliev — who had arrived in the Port from Bulgaria six weeks earlier — said: "I saw them in the middle of a sexual act.

"I started talking in Bulgarian, saying, 'Shame on you, this is a public place'."

The girl told the trial previously that she was alone in the toilet on the evening of May 22 and that Iliev had come in and sexually assaulted her by grabbing her bottom.

During his evidence, Iliev claimed that the girl had been 'flirting' with him as he did pull-up exercises in Coronation Park — 'making eye contact and constantly playing with her hair'.

He said that he and an older Bulgarian friend, aged between 50 and 59, then followed the young couple into the toilet to 'find out exactly what was happening'.

Iliev — who said he was 'embarrassed' by the claimed flirting — told Greenock Sheriff Court that he couldn't shoot a video because his phone battery 'died'.

Prosecutor Frankie Morgan said: "That's rather convenient for you."

Fiscal depute Mr Morgan put it to him: "You were so embarrassed that you wanted to follow them into a public toilet. That is not the actions of an embarrassed man, is it?"

Iliev replied: "People are different. We are all different."

Mr Morgan said: "You had your own thoughts and when you saw the girl go into the toilet by herself you took your opportunity."

Iliev was warned by Sheriff Daniel Kelly after he said in a raised voice: "I'm not answering any more of these questions."

Mr Morgan said: "You saw the girl looking at you and you interpreted what you saw as flirting; your state of mind was clear — to sexually assault her."

Iliev said: "Not true."

Mr Morgan said: "You say you wanted a video of two young people having sex."

Iliev replied: "Whether they were having sex or not, I did not know."

Mr Morgan said: "And you say that it was they who were behaving abnormally?"

The prosecutor put it to Iliev: "You say you thought at one point that they were doing something with a dead body."

Iliev responded: "They were in and out [of the toilet], how would I know what they were doing?"

The girl's boyfriend testified earlier that he was in the gents loo when he heard her screaming out for him.

Police officers later conducted a test to see whether such a scream could be audible from where the boy said he was, and it could be heard 'faintly', the trial was told.

The court heard that there had been physical contact between Iliev and the girl, however, forensic experts found no trace of his DNA on the buttocks area of leggings she had been wearing.

The mother of the girl's boyfriend told the court that the young female was 'bubbly and outgoing' but turned up at her house 'chalk white and visibly shaking' after her encounter with Iliev.

Sheriff Kelly found him guilty of behaving in a threatening or abusive manner likely to cause a reasonable person to suffer fear or alarm by entering the female toilets and opening a cubicle door.

He found the sexual assault charge not proven.

Sentence on Iliev, previously of the Port's Highholm Street, has been deferred until October 1 for a background report.

Sheriff Kelly said: "I want to be addressed on any significant sexual element insofar as it relates to this offence."