A sex attacker who raped a teenage babysitter after carrying out a street assault on a stranger has been jailed.
Darren Appleby first struck 16 years ago when he attacked a lone woman in Dunfermline and dragged her to the ground.
Appleby, 51, put an arm around the victim before straddling her and kneeling on her legs.
He pulled and ripped her underwear and molested her during the street attack in 2006 at Foundry Street.
Raped babysitter
Two years later he went on to indecently assault a further victim before later raping her.
The woman, now aged 32, told the High Court in Edinburgh before he raped her, Appleby said: “I want you. You know exactly why I am here.”
She said he appeared “arrogant” and “cocky” before he started to undress her.
“He said he was going to go the whole way.
“I didn’t want to. I kept saying ‘please don’t. Leave me alone. I don’t want this’.”
The woman said that during the ordeal she kept on asking him to stop.
She said: “I just wanted him to get off, to stop, but I was just frozen.”
The victim told the court that on a previous occasion she had acted as a babysitter when Appleby had been out drinking and began touching her after he returned.
Jury verdicts
Appleby, of Fairways, Dunfermline, had denied offending during his trial but was found guilty of all five charges that he faced – four by unanimous verdicts of the jury.
He was convicted of assaulting his first victim with intent to rape her on November 5 in 2006 in Foundry Street.
He was also found guilty of two charges of raping the second woman and two of assaulting her in 2008 and 2009 at addresses and in a car in Fife.
Advocate depute Peter Ferguson KC said Appleby had no previous convictions and was given bail following an initial court appearance in 2020.
The trial judge deferred sentence until July for the preparation of a background report and placed him on the Sex Offenders Register.
He was remanded in custody.
Lord Ericht told jurors: “It has been a very serious and unpleasant case.”
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