SENTENCING STATEMENTS

In passing sentence, Judge McFadyen observed:

“You have been found guilty of seven charges of rape or assault with intent to rape of five different women, some on more than one occasion, and all in Dundee.  The evidence showed that you had deliberately targeted sex workers, all of whom were from overseas and who had or might have been expected to have potential visa difficulties and anxiety about the legality of their occupations and the security of their residence in this country and who also had limited or very limited understanding of English.  Their vulnerability was such that you believed that they were unlikely to go to the police, and you were therefore able to continue to offend, committing very violent rapes and sexual assaults over a period of over 2 years.

Your normal approach was to make an appointment by telephone for sexual services with foreign sex workers who used particular websites to advertise their services.  They would understand that what was required was a massage or sex and a fee would usually be agreed.  The victims would expect to be paid on your arrival at their accommodation.  In such cases, you would typically attend appearing well presented and be admitted, refuse to pay, pull out a knife and then assault and rape the victim.  In some cases, you tied up your victim.  In some cases, your victim was subjected to additional violence or degradation and on one occasion you filmed that.  Your victims would be left hurt, sometimes physically and always psychologically, but in most cases likely to be unwilling to go to the police.

The one case which was different was the first of the campaign (charge 1).  In that case the victim, who is Chinese had just arrived in Dundee.  She had very little English.  You had not spoken to her or, to her knowledge, made any arrangement to attend the flat she was staying in.  She was not engaged in sex work that day and your arrival at the door was unexpected.  When you appeared, she thought you were some tradesman or utility worker and she opened the door.  You presented a knife which you held at her, and you forced her into the bedroom where you forced her to remove her clothes and tied her wrists together.   She managed to push you off and to struggle free and was so terrified that she ran out of the flat and into the common close naked.  She looked outside but could not see anyone and then saw you leaving the building, so she went back inside, but you came back, apparently looking for your phone.  She had managed to pull some clothes on and, when you banged on the door, she was so terrified that she jumped out of a window to escape and flagged down members of the public.  She explained in a few words of English that she had been attacked.

The police were called and they later took possession of the rope, which was still attached to her wrists and took various samples and photographs.  She had minor injuries to her legs from going through the window.  The rope or cord (in the nature of a washing line) was found to have five knots and cellular material from four of the five knots contained DNA attributable to the victim and to you.  Your palm print was found on the area above and the right of the letterbox on her front door.  Unfortunately, you were not known to the police and were not on databases, and you were therefore able to continue to offend against other women who did not go to the police. 

Your behaviour against them was similar and, in most cases, you were successful in raping them, orally in the case of two victims and vaginally in all the rape cases.  You manged to trick your way into one victim’s flat on a later occasion by adopting a disguise, although that time she fought you off.

The victim in the final charge is Brazilian.  Tellingly, when you had raped her, she told you she was going to report you to the police and you said, “who are the police going to believe, a white Scottish man or a Brazilian prostitute?”   She was interviewed by the police in London on 18 January 2023 in connection with human trafficking enquiries and concerns for her welfare and she disclosed that she had been raped in Dundee.  Arrangements were made for her to be interviewed by officers of Police Scotland.  She was able to produce a SIM card from which the police were able to identify a telephone number used by you to make an appointment with her and that led to complex enquiries eventually leading to all the remaining victims being traced and interviewed.

It was clear from the evidence as well as from victim impact statements submitted by three of your victims that your crimes had impacted very seriously on them.

The police were ultimately able to piece together a case in respect of all of the victims and, of course, you were ultimately identified by DNA and palmprint evidence in relation to charge 1.

I wish to pay tribute to your victims who bravely cooperated with the police and gave evidence against you and I wish to pay tribute to the work of the police in Scotland and England in tracing and listening to your victims, gaining their confidence to come forward as witnesses and piecing together the compelling evidence which has brought you to court. 

Your position at the trial was to deny some details and incidents, but largely to assert that what happened was rape role play which you had agreed with the individual victims.  They all utterly rejected that, as well as your claim to have paid them for their services.  Troublingly, in the face of that compelling evidence from a number of different women, you continue to maintain that dishonest position.

I was sufficiently concerned about the risk that you present to women to request that a full risk assessment be carried out, and I now have the advantage of a full risk assessment report as well as a justice social work report. 

I pause to observe that you are a man who has over some years maintained a double life: ostensibly a respectable married man, well-educated and holding down responsible jobs, but even before this campaign of offending you had accepted that you had issues with sex addition, including the use of sex workers and had undergone counselling.   Despite that, you launched yourself on a coldly calculated campaign of rape of extremely vulnerable women.

The risk assessor concludes, in her very careful and thorough report, that in terms of the statutory risk criteria, the risk that your being at liberty presents to the safety of the public at large is medium.  She also concludes that your risk may be manageable in the context of a lengthy prison sentence and extension period.

I would take issue with her on one point and that is her statement that you “did not physically harm victims more than what was required for compliance, for example, he did not punch/hit/cut them with a knife etc”  because there was indeed evidence that you punched one victim and choked another, but I do not consider that affects the validity of her overall and careful conclusions.

I am required to impose an order for lifelong restriction if I am satisfied on a balance of probabilities that the risk criteria are met, that is that the nature of, or the circumstances of the commission of, the offences of which you have been found guilty either in themselves or as part of a pattern of behaviour are such as to demonstrate that there is a likelihood that, if at liberty, you will seriously endanger the lives, or physical or psychological well-being, of members of the public at large.

Having mind to the careful conclusions of the risk assessor and what she has to say in particular about the scope for mitigation of risk over time I am not satisfied that the risk criteria are met and accordingly it seems to me that it is not necessary that I impose an order for lifelong restriction, but I will clearly have to impose a significant extended sentence.

That will be an extended sentence of 18 years with a custodial period of 14 years, with effect from 15 May 2023, when you were remanded in custody, and an extension period of four years.

I require to specify the custodial periods which I would attribute to individual offences or groups of offences if I was sentencing you for them alone.  Although your attacks in charges 1 and 7 were not successful, that was because you were fought off and I see no reason to treat them as significantly less serious than completed rapes.

The period that I consider appropriate for charge 1 is seven years.   I shall take charges 2 and 3, which relate to the same victim, together, and the period that I consider appropriate is eight years.  Your behaviour in charge 4 was particularly aggravated, involving tying up, punching your victim, cutting her clothing, penetration with an object (which you filmed) and rape and the period in respect of that offence would be nine years.

I shall take charges 6 and 7 together.  They involve repeated attacks on the same victim, including aggravated behaviour and, in charge 7, the adoption of a disguise to obtain admission to her flat. I consider the appropriate period for these charges would be nine years. 

In charge 9, I consider the appropriate period would be eight years.

Clearly a sentence of 41 years would be excessive.  Applying the principle of totality to your offending I conclude that an appropriate overall custodial period would be fourteen years.

You will thereafter be subject to an extension period of four years when you will be subject to licence conditions set on behalf of the Scottish Ministers.  If you breach these conditions, you can be returned to custody.

I shall make non-harassment orders that you do not approach or contact or attempt to approach or contact any of your victims in any way for an indefinite period.

I have already informed you that you are subject to sex offenders’ registration and notification requirements; in light of the sentence that I have passed today that will be for an indefinite period.

I shall order that the risk assessment report is made available to any agencies that may have in-put in relation to your future management under the sentence which I have imposed.”

16 March 2026