Rapist who abused a mother and daughter given lengthy jail term

A rapist who molested a mother and her underage daughter on the same day after he was freed on bail was jailed for eight years and three months today.
Edinburgh High CourtEdinburgh High Court
Edinburgh High Court

Sex predator Edward Hunter woke up the mother by touching her sexually after staying over at her home in Sauchie and then turned his attention to her 15-year-old daughter in the early hours of the morning.

The High Court in Edinburgh heard that after the mother found out about the abuse she had confronted Hunter and said: “How could you touch the bairn?”

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Hunter (42) of Westerton Terrace, Carronshore had been freed on bail months earlier by a sheriff in Stirling, facing serious charges against other victims, when he sexually assaulted the mother and daughter on January 8 this year.

He denied a string of charges during an earlier trial but was found guilty of ten offences of rape, sexual assault, indecency and assault, committed against four victims between 2003 and this year.

A judge told Hunter: “These offences include ones against two young girls, one of whom you raped repeatedly.”

Lord Boyd of Duncansby said: “It appears to me you have no appreciation of the harm you have caused.”

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Lord Boyd said that although Hunter had not previously served a prison sentence his criminal record did include convictions for assault.

The judge ordered that Hunter should be kept under supervision for a further three year period and told him that he would be put on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.

Hunter earlier told jurors at his trial: “I never touched any of them. I am not that sort of person. I don’t agree with it. It’s disgusting.”

One woman was assaulted and raped by Hunter at her home in a small Stirlingshire village and he also targeted a child relative of the victim from the age of 12 for sexual abuse and rape from the age of 13.

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The child victim, who is now aged 22, said she had been sleeping at the house when Hunter came in and began touching her legs and buttocks.

She said: “I didn’t tell anybody else. When I was younger something like this had happened and nobody had believed me.”

She said: “On other occasions he would touch me on my clothes and under my clothes. If I was pretending to be asleep I would roll or move away.”

“I told him to stop a few times. I don’t know how many. One time he was saying it wouldn’t hurt. Another time he was telling me not to tell anybody,” she told the court.

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She that Hunter would sometimes take her pyjama bottoms off to molest her. But the behaviour escalated and by the time she was 13 or 14 she said Hunter was having sex with her.

She said she believed it had happened to her more than four times.

Advocate depute Kath Harper asked the woman if Hunter had asked her if she wanted to have sex and she replied: “No”. The prosecutor asked if he had given her any choice and she said: “No.”

The woman said she later visited her relative who had been raped by Hunter and the older woman had mentioned that he had been accused of sexual assault.

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She said: “I had said that I knew about the things she was saying. I guess I knew because it happened to me. She asked me more questions.”

“We both got quite upset and I went to the bathroom and when I came back she told me she had been in the garden and she had phoned the police and they were on their way to talk to me,” she said.

Following the abuse of the first two victims, which ended in 2012, Hunter was charged with offences but freed on bail before committing the further sexual assaults against the mother and daughter.

Defence Lorraine Glancy said Hunter was a man with “some difficulties”. She said he took medication for an attention deficit disorder and was also dyslexic, but lived alone.

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She said: “He presents today as a man isolated from others within the community. That is likely to be the position when he is released from the sentence imposed on him.”

She added: “He is realistic that only one sentence can be imposed today and that is likely to be a lengthy period of imprisonment.”