A double rapist was finally brought to justice yesterday after his trial went ahead at the third attempt.
James Taylor, 26, was found guilty of raping two women in Wick and Dingwall.
During his first attack Taylor continued to have sex with one victim after she had told him to stop.
He pulled off the second woman’s lower clothes and struggled with her before raping her.
The High Court in Edinburgh was told that two previous attempts to put Taylor on trial did not go ahead because victims were unfit to give evidence at the time.
After Taylor was convicted of the rapes and and further assaults against one of the victims and a third woman the court heard he had a criminal record for violence and disorder.
Taylor, a prisoner in Inverness, carried out his first sex attack in Wick between December 2010 and February 2011 and raped the second woman in Dingwall in March in 2016.
He also punched and kicked the first victim and throttled her during attacks in 2010 and 2011 and grabbed a third woman by the neck and pinned her against a door in a further attack at a house in Dingwall in March in 2016.
Taylor had denied the offences and claimed that the sex with the women was consensual.
One 26-year-old rape victim told the court that Taylor had been caring when she first met him but soon began to fly into violent rages.
She said on one occasion he punched the wall before rounding on her. “He turned to me and grabbed me and pushed me against the wall and tried to strangle me,” she told the court.
The trial judge, Lord Boyd of Duncansby, deferred sentence on Taylor for the preparation of a background and remanded him in custody.
