A serial rapist who sexually assaulted a woman while she was having an epileptic fit was jailed for eight years and nine months today.
David Cruickshank, 30, raped three girls at houses in Aberdeen as a teenager before indecently attacking his last victim in the city.
A judge told Cruickshank at the High Court in Edinburgh: “You appear here today for sentence on four separate charges, three of rape and one of indecent assault, involving four different victims.”
Lord Uist said: “All of the rape victims were girls under the age of majority at the materiel times. You were aged between 15 and 18.”
The judge said: “One charge of rape involved a single instance. The other two consisted of rapes on various occasions over a period.”
Lord Uist said: “The seriousness of the crimes for which you must now be sentenced is self-evident.”
He told Cruickshank: “You had an unsettled upbringing and suffered from an autistic spectrum disorder, but that did not effect your criminal responsibility for your actions, although it does explain your apparent lack of remorse for what you did.”
The judge told the sex predator that he would have jailed him for 10 years if he had been convicted of the charges after trial.
But he acknowledged that his guilty to plea to two of the offences – a rape and the indecent assault – had avoided those victims having to give evidence.
Unemployed Cruickshank, formerly of Balnagask Wynd, Torry, in Aberdeen, was earlier unanimously found guilty of the other two rape offences. Cruickshank raped his first victim, a 12-year-old, between September 1999 and March the following year when he was 15.
He pulled the girl to the floor and took off her trousers and pants. The child victim screamed for help but he continued with the assault.
She continued to scream and say “no” but Cruickshank continued with the rape.
The girl, who had never had sex before described it as painful, feeling as though “he was going to rip” her.
Cruickshank went on to rape two other child victims who were aged between seven and 10 and six and nine.
During the final incident, the assault on the woman suffering the seizure, he put his hand down her trousers and molested her.
Advocate depute Bill McVicar said: “During the seizure she was aware of what was happening around her, but was unable to speak.”
Afterwards she felt drowsy and fell asleep. She did not reveal the sexual abuse until later.
Defence counsel Frances McMenamin QC said that Cruickshank knew he was facing a lengthy jail sentence.
She said: “It would appear that whatever was going on in his life when he was between 15 and 18 years of age had resolved itself.”
“He has made it absolutely plain to me he will never do anything like this again,” she said.
Miss McMenamin said the autism sufferer knew that what he had done to victims was wrong.
She said that Cruickshank was prepared to co-operate with any programmes required of him and added: “He simply never wants to be in this position again.”
Cruickshank was placed on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.
