A witness in the trial of an Aberdeen photographer accused of sexual offences involving 13 females has claimed she woke to find him lying on top of her and groping her private parts.
Simon ‘Sid’ Scott, 44, is facing 13 charges of sexual assaults and indecent behaviour against a dozen young women and an underage girl.
The charges – which span a period of 11 years – involved police sifting through hundreds of thousands of images, with 150,000 deemed to contain eroticism or nudity.
Scott, of Sunnyside Road, Aberdeen, denies all the charges against him.
The woman, who was 18 at the time, told jurors at Aberdeen Sheriff Court that she had met Scott on a night out in 2008, with the two subsequently chatting by text and on the social media platform MySpace.
She said she met Scott at his George Street home and he offered to let her stay over due to bad weather outside.
The woman claimed she then woke up in the early hours of the morning to find Scott on top of her, groping her breasts and rubbing her private parts.
‘I felt really scared’
“I just froze,” she told fiscal depute Lynne MacVicar.
“I kept my eyes closed because I thought that if he thought I was asleep then maybe he would stop – but he didn’t stop.
“I had this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach – I felt really scared.”
The woman told the court she then jumped up, grabbed her clothes and left the flat.
“I ran all the way home,” she added.
During cross-examination by Scott’s defence advocate, David Taylor, asked the woman whether she could be mistaken about the identity of his client given the amount of time between the alleged incident in 2008 and when she reported Scott to police in 2020.
“No,” she said.
Mr Taylor then asked whether, during an identity parade where she identified his client, she could be mistaken about him being the correct person “nearly 13 years later?”
“No,” she said.
Scott is also accused of around a dozen charges related to sexual offences while working as a professional photographer.
An actress and model also gave evidence in the trial today and told jurors she was sexually assaulted by Scott when she was a teenager.
The woman, who has featured in major TV advertising campaigns, took part in three photoshoots with Scott when she was 18 – including one incident where she claims he lathered her in baby oil and touched her breasts and bottom.
She said this was so he could apply glitter to capture a particular photographic style that was popular in 2018.
The woman also added that Scott told her he had “never done it before”, which she thought was “strange” as the glitter pot was “half empty”.
Evidence was previously heard given by two other women that Scott had carried out photoshoots involving glitter in 2017.
Asked by the fiscal depute how she felt now about her interactions with Scott in 2018, the woman, now 23, described Scott as “good at pretending to be professional and convincing young women he’s a professional”.
“I think he knows who to go for,” she said.
“None of it was professional. I feel like he took advantage of the fact that I was naïve and did not know what I was doing.
“He was a lot older than I was.”
During cross-examination, Mr Taylor said that the woman had described his client as “heavily involved in the application of the baby oil” but suggested his client didn’t lay his hands on her”.
“I completely disagree. I completely 100% disagree with that statement,” she said.
The trial, before Sheriff Morag McLaughlin, continues.
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