An offshore worker who was jailed for having sex with a schoolgirl has mounted a legal bid for freedom.
Darren Cross was caught by police lying naked in bed alongside his 15-year-old victim.
He denied the offence and told officers he was nude because he suffered from an “overactive thyroid” which caused him to heat up overnight.
After a three-day trial at Peterhead Sheriff Court, a jury found Cross guilty of having sex with the youngster in the early hours of September 5, 2011, after an alcohol-fuelled housewarming party.
Now the father-of-two, whose address was listed on court papers as 3 Schoolbrae Place, Elgin, has launched an appeal against his conviction and sentence.
A hearing is expected to take place at Edinburgh’s Court of Criminal Appeals in the coming weeks.
Jailing him earlier this month, Sheriff Alison Stirling said: “I take into account that the woman in this case was a willing participant, but I believe a custodial sentence is the only appropriate disposal in this case.”
She said the victim had alcohol issues and had been entrusted into Cross’s care by her mother.
After the trial, jurors were told Cross had a previous conviction for lewd and libidinous behaviour from 2012 and was previously jailed for four-and-a-half months for leading a high-speed police chase through a Highland village while disqualified from driving.
At the trial in April, jurors heard Cross’s victim had been too drunk to remember what happened on the evening of the offence but forensic analysis of her underwear revealed traces of his DNA.
Offshore worker Ian Ritchie, a friend of Cross, went to sleep in the living room at the end of the party, while Cross and the girl agreed to sleep “top to toe” in a bedroom.
About 10 minutes later, Mr Ritchie said he heard the noise of the bed moving and heavy breathing.
Feeling uncomfortable, he began to walk to Peterhead, where his girlfriend stayed. He later called police to ask for advice, at which point officers were sent to Cross’s property.
When police later asked him why he was naked in bed with the teenager, he said he had an “overactive thyroid” which meant his body never cooled down.
Defence agent Jim Wardlaw argued that the Crown had failed to prove its case, because no one had witnessed the pair having sex. However, jurors took less than an hour to return their verdict of guilty by majority.
Cross was told he will remain on the sex offenders register “indefinitely”.
