An Elgin fish shop worker who molested a 13-year-old girl and sexually assaulted a vulnerable woman in exchange for cash has been convicted of his crimes.
William Mackie, 74, targeted the females at the now-closed Lossie Fish Shop on Culbard Street on dates in 2009/10 and 2016.
Mackie was tried at Inverness Sheriff Court on charges of using lewd, indecent and libidinous practices and behaviour towards the young teenager as well as sexually assaulting a young woman.
In evidence led by fiscal depute Pauline Gair, the first victim told the court she was 13 and had been in the habit of visiting Mackie’s shop with friends.
She said initially the older man would pass her folded bank notes, despite her not having asked him for money.
But when she visited the shop one day hoping for cash to pay for some food this changed.
“He told me if I wanted money I had to let him kiss my p****,” she said.
Victim targeted in back of shop
The witness explained that Mackie then put the latch on the door before laying a towel on the floor in the back of the shop.
“He unbuttoned my jeans, pulled them down to my knees and told me to sit on the towel,” she told the court, before detailing how Mackie performed a sex act on her.
She said it lasted “a few minutes” but “felt a lot longer”
She said: “Afterwards I just got dressed and he gave me money and I left.”
Asked if Mackie had said anything to her after the incident, she replied: “That I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.”
Speaking about why she had not told anyone about the incident at the time, she said: “I felt like they wouldn’t believe me” and “I didn’t want them to know what happened”.
The court heard that the woman eventually reported Mackie to police in 2022, after supporting a family member through an experience that “triggered it all up”.
When defence solicitor Stephen Carty, for Mackie, suggested that it “simply didn’t happen” she told him: “I know it happened – Bill knows it happened.”
The second victim, who was described in court was “vulnerable”, said she had visited Mackie’s shop believing that she was going to do a cleaning job.
But when she arrived at the premises, there was already someone cleaning and she was taken into the office by Mackie and told to “stay quiet”.
The woman, who was 22 at the the time of the offence, described how the then 66-year-old Mackie targeted her in between serving customers in the shop.
“He had said: ‘Let’s take a look at you’ and had pulled the top bit of my jumper off and had a look at my breasts. I pulled away and said no.”
She said Mackie then undid the button on her jeans and put his hand down into her underwear before carrying out an act that was “sore and uncomfortable”.
The woman then told the court Mackie took her to the back of the shop where he took down her trousers before performing a sex act on her, during which she felt “scared”.
The woman said after the incident, which left her feeling “horrible”, Mackie placed £60 in her hand, which she used to reclaim a mobile phone that she had pawned.
She had reported the matter to the police days later, after discussing it with a student advisor at the college where she was studying.
Taking to the witness box in his own defence, Mackie denied ever having been alone with the first victim.
‘I thought she was coming on to me’
He admitted to kissing the second woman and touching her breasts saying: “I was flattered, I thought she was coming on to me”.
He said he felt “huge regret” afterwards, adding: “I know it shouldn’t have happened, I felt guilty, but it had been done and I had no excuse.”
Mackie denied putting his hand in her underwear and touching her intimately or performing a sex act on her.
But a jury took less than two hours to reject his version of events and return guilty verdicts on both charges.
Sheriff Eilidh MacDonald told Mackie: “You have been found guilty of these two charges – they are serious charges indeed.
“The court will be considering all sentencing options, including, obviously, a period of imprisonment given the nature of the offences.”
The sheriff called for the production of presentencing reports and placed Mackie on the sex offenders register with immediate effect.
Mackie, of Cockburn Place, Elgin, was allowed to remain on bail meantime.
