To his customers and locals who knew him, Andy Keir was the respectable front for one of Broughty Ferry’s most upmarket haunts.
A place where people went to treat themselves to finer food and the best cocktails.
But on Tuesday, the former Bruach owner was jailed for five years for forcing himself on his victim while she slept at his Monifieth home on November 11 2019.
The woman woke – without knowing where she was or who she was with – to find Keir performing a sex act on her before he raped her.
She fled, calling 999 from a payphone in the street.
At the High Court in Glasgow last month, Keir denied any criminality and maintained the act was consensual.
But a jury rejected his claims and found him guilty of raping the woman while she was intoxicated, asleep and incapable of giving her consent.
Keir showed little emotion as Judge Douglas Brown, in his sentencing remarks, said the jail time imposed “must reflect the gravity of the crime”.
He appeared to whisper a few words of comfort to his mum as he left the dock.
Business dealings
For almost two years after the rape was reported to police, the 38-year-old remained a director of DD5 Ltd, the firm that runs Bruach.
Companies House documents reveal Keir, first appointed in August 2013, resigned and ceased to be a person of significant control, on October 18 last year.
It came just over two weeks after Laura Mairi Keir, 36, was given ‘significant control’ of DD5 Ltd.
Its only registered director is Daniel Wojciech Gora – appointed on the day of the sex offender’s resignation.
Mr Gora, 32, refused to comment when contacted by The Courier and Evening Telegraph.
Charity efforts masked truth
Andy Keir, who now lives in Pathhead, Midlothian, was a prominent member of the local business community in Dundee whose endeavours also took him abroad.
In September 2019, he was among a group of 45 bartenders who featured in the Martini Racing Ciclismo, a charity cycle from Florence to Rome.
Just weeks after the start of the Covid lockdown in 2020 – and months after the rape had been reported to police – he joined forces with other local landlords to help set up a foodbank-like scheme to support stuck-at-home Broughty Ferry residents.
And in July that same year, he spoke of his relief at the pubs being able to serve customers indoors for the first time since pandemic restrictions were introduced.
Keir said: “This weekend couldn’t have gone better.
“We’ve had no issues and plenty of great feedback from our customers.
“A lot of it was about how comfortable and safe people have felt in the bar.
“It’s just great, it feels good. Our staff and customers have really missed the experience of going out.”
But the clientele at Bruach had no idea the man welcoming them back to some form of normality was under investigation for rape.
Sentenced at High Court
In court on Tuesday, the judge 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.”
Jurors heard the woman was disorientated when she woke at Keir’s then-home in Muirnwood Place, Monifieth, to find him sexually assaulting her.
The judge 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.”
Judge Brown expressed concern by the suggestion “the event was less significant” because Keir’s victim had consented to a sexual encounter with him in a pub toilet earlier in the evening.
He added: “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.”
