A former King’s horseman who raped a succession of teenage trainee instructors at a top Scottish residential riding school is facing jail.
James Christopher Armour, a bombardier in the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, was home on periods of leave when he attacked three girl – aged 17 to 19 – at the Dunvegan Equestrian Centre, Newburgh, in the 1980s.
The school was at the time run by his stepmother Jane Armour, a highly regarded dressage judge and “trainer of trainers”.
A court heard 57-year-old Armour, known as Chris, served for nine years with the King’s Troop, famous for its horse teams that pull 13-pounder guns on royal state occasions, take part in Trooping the Colour, and mount guard on Horse Guards Parade.
He represented Britain as an Army showjumper, and continued eventing in civilian life, in 2010 even making the cover of Horse & Hound magazine.
But the High Court in Stirling heard his victims carried “dark memories” for decades of what he’d done, and eventually, in 2019, one of them saw a TV advert for Rape Crisis.
Operation Cliftok
The woman contacted police, who launched “Operation Cliftok,” to probe the abuse of girls at the centre.
The woman, also now 57, told the court that in 1983, Armour – then a complete stranger whom she’d never met or even seen before – had suddenly walked into a stable where she was working, kicked her between the legs, “shoved” her against the wall, and raped her.
Over the next two years, he went on to rape her frequently when on leave – on the stable floor, on the kitchen floor, and in her bedroom at the centre’s three-storey mansion Dunvegan House, grabbing her breasts and punching her in the stomach.
On one occasion he came up behind her while she was washing horses’ bits in a tack room sink, hit her on the bottom with a riding crop, then grabbed her by the hair and held her head under the taps for “minutes”, before pulling off her jodhpurs and raping her.
She said: “I felt sick. I was just crying all the time.”
Victim left bleeding and in pain
His second victim, now a 59-year-old farmer, said she was at the centre in the last quarter of 1985 when she was woken from sleep by floorboards squeaking.
Armour came in, put his hand over her mouth, told her to be silent, pulled the bedcovers back, and raped her, before turning her over and raping her again anally.
After he finished, he left, and she staggered to the bathroom, bleeding and in pain.
Explaining why she had not reported the rape then, or challenged Armour at the time, she said: “I was scared.
“I was a naive young girl.
“It was the start of my career.
“If I’d opened my mouth I’d not have had 30 to 40 years with horses. That’s what I thought.”
She added: “In those days there wasn’t any help. You shut up. You blocked it out. You got on with your life.
“You didn’t talk about those things.”
Survival instinct
Armour’s third victim was also raped in her bedroom in Dunvegan House in the late ’80s, when she was 17, studying for her British Horse Society Assistant Instructor Certificate (BHSAI).
Now 53, she said Armour came in, smelling of drink, and they began consensually kissing. But then he got on top of her and raped her, despite her trying to push him off and repeatedly saying “no”.
Clearly distressed giving evidence, she told the jury she had “shut it all down at the time”.
She said: “I think it was a survival instinct. It was embarrassing. I didn’t think for one moment I’d be believed.”
Armour, who was living when the trial began at an Army veterans’ home in Congleton, Cheshire, denied the rapes, and claimed in evidence that all the women were “fantasists”.
He said he’d never had sex with the first woman as “she wasn’t the prettiest thing in the world.”
He claimed he had never met the second woman, and that intercourse with the third had been consensual.
“I left her satisfied,” he said.
Shone a torch on dark memories
After a five-day trial, jurors took three hours to find Armour guilty of all three rapes, committed between March 1983 and June 1989.
He showed no emotion as the verdict was returned.
Judge Lord Young deferred sentence until April 25 at the High Court in Edinburgh, and revoked bail.
He said: “Give the seriousness of these matters he will be remanded in custody.”
Armour, who has previous convictions for battery in England, was also placed on the sex offenders’ register.
Gary Allan KC, defending, reserved mitigation.
Referring to the initial call to the police, prosecutor Chris Fyffe KC said one woman’s “Me Too” moment had “shone a torch on the dark memories all three women had held, and struggled to come to terms with… for over 35 years”.
He said Armour, “a muscular young solider”, had “used his physical attributes to overpower girls at Dunvegan for his own sexual gratification, taking what he wanted regardless of their wishes”.
He said the victims had given “clear and compelling accounts” of being raped by Armour.
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