A predatory university student who snatched a lone woman from the street and raped her, has been jailed for eight years.
Callum Duncan followed his victim, from Dundee, grabbed her by the hair and dragged her into a close in Aberdeen.
After dragging the woman up three floors in the stairwell Duncan violently raped her and subjected her to abuse over a long period.
The rape survivor, aged 25, told Duncan’s trial that she had left a nightclub and got food, before parting company with friends.
They had insisted on walking with her, but were due to go in a different direction to get home.
The health worker said: “I knew Aberdeen quite well. I said I was grand. I always felt very safe in Aberdeen.”
Rapist was a complete stranger
The woman had previously studied in Aberdeen before securing employment in Dundee, but regularly returned to the northeast city.
Duncan had claimed during his trial the sex was consensual.
Judge Lady Scott told Duncan at the High Court in Edinburgh: “Your victim was a complete stranger to you.
“She was walking home to a friend’s house after a night out.”
The judge said: “Your victim is a resourceful and brave young woman. She has endured a long struggle to survive.”
Lady Scott said the woman has begun to rebuild her life and in her own words said: “She would not be defined by what you did to her”.
She said she took into account Duncan was a first offender, aged 21 at the time and had been an ambitious student who worked hard.
Without those factors, the prison term would have run into double figures.
Multiple sex crimes
Duncan, now 23, had denied abducting and raping the woman on March 30, 2019 at Raeburn Place, in Aberdeen, but was unanimously convicted of the crime by a jury at his trial.
He was also found guilty of sexually assaulting another young woman on two separate occasions in January 2019 at clubs in Aberdeen.
Duncan, an engineering student at Aberdeen University, was also convicted of standing naked at a window of a flat in in Nellfield Place, Aberdeen, on January 11 last year.
He carried out a solo sex act in front of a woman after he was released on bail by the city’s sheriff court following the rape charge.
Defence solicitor advocate Iain Paterson said: “Using his words ‘Screwed up my life completely’ is how he put it and I think that’s fair to say.”
Duncan was placed on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.
