A remand prisoner who used a burner phone to threaten a Dundee mother and young children has been ordered not to contact her for a decade.
John Scott was also placed on supervision for two years under a community payback order.
He was told he must provide details to social workers in charge of monitoring him of any relationships he forms with women.
The court instructed the supervising officers to contact all of Scott’s new domestic partners to make them aware of the accused’s past behaviour.
Scott appeared for sentencing at the High Court in Livingston via a video link from Perth Prison, where he was still being held.
He was originally remanded in custody after the woman he threatened went to police, alleging he had raped her at her home in Dundee.
The 24-year-old van driver – who has since been acquitted of the October 2020 rape allegation – used a mobile phone he claimed was “untraceable” to call the woman from Perth Prison.
He made chilling threats that she and the children would get bullets through their heads if he was convicted.
He told her: “I won’t be getting done with rape.
“You’ll be murdered before I get done with that.”
Threats from prison
The woman – who cannot be named for legal reasons – told a jury Scott said he “dreamed every night of murdering her”.
She said: “He told me there’s two people watching the house and a bullet will go through (one child’s head, then another child’s head) and then let me suffer for a week before putting a bullet through my head.
“He said he was using a burner phone so it couldn’t be traced.”
She revealed he had earlier messaged her saying she had better get the rape charge dropped, “or I’ll get you dropped”.
She told prosecutor Paul Harvey she was left “shaken and scared” by what Scott had said.
Scott, from Dundee, pled guilty to being in possession of a banned personal communication device in jail and attempting to pervert the course of justice by making threats to the victim while on remand.
Following a three-day trial at the High Court in Stirling, a jury found the charge of rape not proven.
Advocate Charles Ferguson, defending, said Scott had threatened the witness because he was angry with her for making the allegation against him.
Not proven verdicts soar in Scottish rape and sex attack trials
