Two brothers who raped and assaulted a teenager in Invergordon have been jailed for more than 11 years.
Alexander Stewart, 20, met the victim through a dating website before taking part in the sex attacks with his older sibling Christopher Drummond – already a convicted sex offender.
The men attacked the 19-year-old at Stewart’s home, a flat on the Ross-shire town’s High Street on October 18 last year.
A judge told the brothers at the High Court in Edinburgh: “Together you subjected the complainer to an appalling series of sexual assaults.”
Lady Carmichael pointed out that Drummond had initially ordered Stewart to hold the victim down and issued further orders to him during the continuing assaults.
Lady Carmichael said: “It was clear from the evidence that you, Christopher Drummond, dominated Alexander Stewart.
She jailed Drummond for seven years for his part in the rapes and his younger brother for four and a half years.
She told Stewart that she considered he was someone who was prone to manipulation by his older high risk brother and that he was genuinely afraid of him. The judge told Drummond that his attitude to women was “extremely troubling”.
The judge ordered that Stewart should be given a further period of supervision for 18 months and told both brothers that they would be on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.
During the attacks they restrained the woman in a bedroom and both raped her. The victim was then grabbed and pulled from the bedroom and raped again by Stewart.
A woman who saw the teenager following the assault and rapes committed on her said she was “crying hysterically”.
Drummond, 23, a prisoner, and Stewart, of High Street, Invergordon, had denied assaulting and raping her during an earlier trial at the High Court in Edinburgh. They were both found guilty of a charge of assaulting her and two charges of raping her.
Following the pair’s convictions Mr Stewart told the court that Drummond had a more extensive criminal record than his co-accused Stewart. He has previously been placed on the sex offenders’ register and also has convictions for violence.
Defence counsel David Moggach, for Drummond, said he still maintained his position that what had taken place was consensual.
He said that Drummond had been visiting his brother but was “quite oblivious and unaware” of any problems the younger man may have had.
Lorenzo Alonzi, for Stewart, said he had been diagnosed with ADHD. The defence counsel added: “He is someone who is highly susceptible to suggestion and easily led and manipulated.”
He told the court: “There has been a progressive acceptance by him of his guilt.”
