A former Broughty Ferry bar owner has been jailed for rape.
Andy Keir, the ex-boss of Bruach who resigned as director of Dundee-based pub operator DD5 Ltd last year, forced himself on his victim while she slept at his home in Monifieth.
The woman woke – not knowing where she was or who she was with – and found Keir performing a sex act on her.
Keir then raped her.
She fled immediately – not stopping to pick up all of her clothes – and called 999 from a payphone in the street.
Glasgow High Court heard 38-year-old Keir continued to “hotly deny” any criminality, maintaining the act had been consensual.
However, a jury rejected his claims and found him guilty of raping the woman while she was intoxicated, asleep and incapable of giving her consent, on November 11 2019.
Keir, now of Pathhead, Midlothian, was jailed for five years.
He has been placed on the Sex Offenders Register indefinitely.
Dead battery
Judge Douglas Brown said: “This crime was committed when you were running a business and followed a night out drinking.
“After the victim became heavily intoxicated you went back to your house with her.”
The judge said jurors heard how the woman was disorientated when she woke at Keir’s then-home in Muirnwood Place to find him sexually assaulting her.
He told Keir: “You then lay on top of her and raped her.
“She was so keen to get out of your house she didn’t gather up all of her clothes.
“The battery on her phone was dead but as soon as she got to a public phone box she dialled 999 and reported a crime of rape.
“She was obviously very distressed.”
The judge told Keir: “Your defence that this sexual activity was consensual was wholly rejected by the jury.
“Rape is an offence that is taken very seriously by this court and any sentence imposed must reflect the gravity of the crime.”
Sex in toilets
Keir’s defence counsel said the rape followed a “night filled with intimacy” between Keir and his victim.
The court was told both had been ejected from a pub that night for having sex in the toilets.
The lawyer added the victim at one point told jurors she may have only been asleep for a matter of seconds.
Judge Brown said: “I am concerned by the suggestion that this event was less significant because she had consented earlier in the evening.”
The defence counsel said although Keir “hotly denied” any crime, he “knew that (prison) was the only realistic outcome”.
Community figure
At the start of the 2020 Covid lockdown – four months after the rape was reported to police – Keir helped set up a foodbank-like scheme with other landlords to support stuck-at-home residents in Broughty Ferry.
He was also among a group of 45 bartenders – including First Dates’ star Merlin Griffiths – who took part in the Martini Racing Ciclismo, a charity cycle from Florence to Rome.
