Bonnybridge lorry driver raped drunk girl

Grandfather Joseph Hail (67), from Bonnybridge, claimed he had consensual sex with the 22-year-old in the back seat of his car after picking her up in Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Park and driving her to Cumbernauld.

Days later he went to her home and posted the purse she had dropped in his car through her letterbox.

At the High Court in Glasgow today, Hail was found guilty of rape at an unknown location in Cumbernauld on August 27 2018.

In evidence, the victim said she remembered leaving a party at the Sanctuary nightclub.

She started crying as she recalled: “My next memory is of lying in the back seat of a car. There was a man there. I remember hearing a moan coming from the man.”

Prosecutor Lisa Gillespie asked the woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons: “Did he say anything to you,” and the witness replied: “No.”

Ms Gillespie then asked: “Do you remember getting into the car,” and she replied: “No.”

When asked to described the man she said: “He was older.”

The woman was asked what was the next thing she remembered and she replied: “I was sitting on the grass. I was crying. I was just scared I couldn’t remember what had happened. “One of my shoes was tied differently from the other and my pants were all twisted.”

The court heard the woman eventually managed to get in touch with her mother and the police were phoned.

DNA recovered from the victim matched Hail, who was asked how he got the woman’s address to give her purse back.

He replied: “I got her driver’s licence with her address on it. I chapped the door and sat there all afternoon. I went back the next night and the purse was too thick to get through, then on the following morning I managed to get the purse thorough the letterbox.”

Hail then tried twice in September to get in contact with his victim on Facebook.

When asked about this he replied: “I was thinking to go on to see if she got her purse alright.”

He claimed they had consensual sex and added: “It just happened. It was her that came on to me.”

The court heard Hail was also convicted of sexually assaulting two girls, aged 16 and 19, in the early hours of the morning on October 1, 2018 in Kelvingrove Park.

Judge Lord Matthews placed Hail on the sex offender’s register, remanded him in custody and deferred sentence until later this month.