A farm worker from Fife is facing a lengthy prison sentence after being convicted of raping a young girl.
Tractor driver Ian Brown had denied committing the “abhorrent” crime but a jury at the High Court in Livingston found him guilty as charged.
His sexual abuse of the primary school pupil, which began when she was five and continued until after she turned six, came to light after the youngster told her mum Brown kept hurting her.
She told police and social workers he had raped her.
The jury was shown a video of her saying the 35-year-old had told her not to tell the police because he would go to jail.
Caught out by stained clothing
Advocate depute Chris Wilson said in his closing remarks the presence of large deposits of the accused’s semen on the girl’s pink leggings was “the most challenging piece of evidence for the accused to overcome”.
He reminded the jury Brown had told them it got there because he had wiped himself with dirty laundry which lay in a pile at the bottom of their bed after having sex with his partner.
However, his girlfriend gave conflicting evidence, revealing the dirty laundry was kept in her kitchen, which was where police found the youngster’s stained clothes.
Mr Wilson pointed out the lengthy accounts the youngster had given of Brown’s abuse included “matters outwith the normal knowledge of a six-year-old”.
He said: “She gave an account of rape in two long interviews, despite being innocent of sexual matters.”
Defence urged ‘dispassionate view’
Brown tried to blame the child’s mother for making up malicious lies about him.
When that claim was put to her by his defence lawyer she replied: “I can’t tell a six-year-old to say what she said.”
The girl’s mum said her daughter had “zero knowledge of sex” and the youngster’s head teacher testified she had had no sex education in school.
In his closing speech, defence counsel Michael Anderson told the jury: “In a case like this, the allegations are so abhorrent it is difficult to leave one’s emotions at the door but that’s the task you have to undertake.
“These allegations are very serious and emotive but you have to take a dispassionate view of the evidence in coming to your verdict.”
He urged caution in coming to the conclusion the forensic evidence was a “slam dunk” for the Crown.
Sentence next month
Jurors rejected his suggestion Brown was innocent and took just two and a half hours to return a unanimous guilty verdict.
Brown held his head in his hands and bowed forward in the dock as the verdict was read out.
Mr Anderson said Brown recognised a sentence of imprisonment is now inevitable.
Lady Haldane called for a criminal justice social work report before sentence and adjourned the case until November 4 at the High Court in Edinburgh.
She told Brown, of Dundas Street, Lochgelly: “You have been convicted of an appalling and frankly incomprehensible crime – the rape of a six-year-old child.
“It’s inevitable that a custodial sentence will follow for a crime of such seriousness.”
She added Brown’s name to the Sex Offenders Register.
