A serial rapist who strangled victims was jailed for 12 years today after carrying out a seven-year campaign of brutality and degradation of women.
Stefan Scott targeted six women for abuse and carried out repeated rape attacks on three of them, aged 21, 29 and 33.
Scott, a prisoner in Perth, had denied a string of charges during a trial but was earlier convicted of 23 charges of rape, assault and abusive behaviour committed between December 2010 and June last year.
The 26-year-old, formerly of Rannoch Road, in Perth, carried out the string of crimes in his home town, Dundee and Pitlochry, in Perthshire.
A judge told Scott at the High Court in Edinburgh: “You have been convicted by the verdicts of the jury of a very, very serious course of sexual, physical and emotional abuse against these complainers.”
Lord Burns told the high risk offender: “They were, in their own ways, vulnerable women.”
The judge said that the rape attacks where women were throttled to the danger of their lives were especially serious.
He ordered that Scott should be kept under supervision for a further four year period and told him he would be on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.
Scott brandished a broken bottle at one woman and throttled her until she blacked out.
He also forced the woman’s head under water and forcefully raped her.
A second woman was punched on the face by Scott and had her breathing restricted when he squeezed her throat and pinned her to a bed.
He threatened to set fire to another woman’s home, slapped her, grabbed her by the neck and tried to compress it and repeatedly punched her.
Scott threatened to kill another victim and to wait for her on the route she followed taking her child to and from school. He also raped the woman and restricted her breathing after grabbing her by the neck.
Another rape victim, who was also throttled, was grabbed by the throat and pinned to the ground at an address in Perth and attacked at a retail park in the city.
Defence counsel Ronnie Renucci QC pointed out that although there were six women complainers in the case, only three had made allegations of sexual abuse.
Mr Renucci said Scott “recognises he has certain problems in certain areas of his life”.
“He spent a great deal of his formative years in care without really any support and guidance. That may, in some way, have contributed to the person he became later on in life,” said the defence counsel.
Victims said that Scott would not take no for answer when he wanted sex and could quickly turn violent. Some were subjected to derogatory abuse and called “slag”, “slut” of “whore”.
Mr Renucci said: “He is determined to try and change his life so that when he is released he does not find himself in the same position again.”
Detective Sergeant Gordon Patullo said: “I would like to thank the victims in this case for the strength and dignity they have shown throughout this investigation and subsequent court case and I hope that today’s sentencing provides them with some closure which will allow them to move on with their lives.”
