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Grantown-on-Spey businessman guilty of two sexual assaults

Carl Stewart has been placed on the sex offenders register after inviting his victims into his home following a ceilidh at Cromdale Community Hall last year.

Carl Stewart. Image: Facebook
Carl Stewart. Image: Facebook

A Grantown-on-Spey businessman and community stalwart has been placed on the sex offenders register for sexually assaulting a 17-year-old girl and her mother.

Carl Stewart, 40, fondled the teenager’s breasts before forcefully kissing her mum.

The outrageously indecent behaviour occurred after a ceilidh at Cromdale Community Hall, which Stewart had helped to organise, on December 8 last year.

Inverness Sheriff Court heard he invited the girl, her mother, and others back to his home to join him and his partner for more drinks.

The teenager was intoxicated and went to Stewart’s toilet, first to phone a friend and then because she felt sick.

Teen begged mum, ‘Please don’t leave me here’

Giving evidence, she told fiscal depute Martina Eastwood there was a knock on the closed door and she turned around.

“Carl was there, and he asked if I was okay,” the witness recalled. “I said, ‘Yeah,’ and we talked. He crouched in front of me. I was passing out, but not completely.

The young victim added: “I had quite a lot to drink and I was tired. His legs and arms were round each side of me. He had one hand round my stomach and one round my collar bone.

“He was saying I shouldn’t wear make-up, fake eyelashes, or hair extensions, and his hand was going higher up on my chest – stroking.

“I was freaking out and I acted like I was spewing.”

The witness cried as she relived Stewart pulling her neck towards him.

“One of the times I woke up, he kept telling me to kiss him, and I said, ‘No’. He kissed my cheek, then my neck, and my mouth. Then someone came into the bathroom.”

Speaking about her ordeal, the young witness said it lasted about 35 minutes.

She denied to Stewart’s defence solicitor, Sam Morrison, that her client was only trying to comfort her and that she was lying.

“He did what I said he did,” she told Sheriff Ian Cruickshank.

Her mother told the court that she didn’t think her daughter was that drunk, and Stewart came to the kitchen to get a glass of water for the teenager.

“He grabbed me forcefully by the shoulder and kissed me on the mouth using his tongue,” the mum explained, adding: “I was shocked and I snatched my head to the side, telling him to ‘f*** off and behave’ and pushed him back.

“He just laughed. He was quite merry. My daughter was lying in a bedroom, and when I went to her, she said, ‘Please don’t leave me here’. ”

The mother denied a suggestion by Ms Morrison that she had “platonically kissed him”.

Stewart had insisted he did ‘absolutely not’ touch the girl

Stewart also gave evidence, insisting he didn’t do what was alleged, and said the bathroom door was open all the time he was in the bathroom with the girl.

Asked if he had touched the girl, Stewart replied: “Absolutely not.”

He insisted he was only comforting her as she felt ill.

“I wouldn’t want to kiss someone who was being sick,” Stewart added.

He claimed the mother thanked him, hugged him, and then “gave me a kiss like one you would give to your granny.”

Cross-examined by the prosecutor, he told Ms Eastwood that he did not “lay hands on her.”

Ms Eastwood asked: “Why would you sit with her for 20 or 30 minutes when there were other women and her mother there?”

He answered, claiming he was only trying to help the mother.

But Sheriff Cruickshank found Stewart, of Kirk Road in Cromdale, guilty of two sexual assaults, carrying out acts without consent.

Although the sheriff deferred sentencing Stewart until next month, as he awaited a background report, the sheriff placed him on the sex offenders register.

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