A failed businessman who subjected a vulnerable woman to an ordeal of abuse and rape was jailed for five years and three months yesterday.
James Allan committed sex acts on the victim who has learning difficulties and took indecent photographs of her during regular visits to her home in Inverness-shire.
Allan, 66, knew the woman had carers to help her with her problems but told his partner that the victim was “no right and had no one looking after her”.
A judge told Allan: “You must have known she was acutely vulnerable to manipulation and you took advantage of this. Your abuse has left her damaged and traumatised.”
Lord Burns said at the High Court in Edinburgh that it was a very serious offence involving a person who was “obviously vulnerable”
The judge told the first offender: “You committed this course of sexual abuse on her over a very extended period of time.”
Allan, formerly of Cloddymoss, Kinterssack, Forres, in Moray, earlier admitted preying on the woman between October 1 in 2011 when she was 56 and November 20 in 2015.
The woman was incapable of consenting to sexual activity because she suffered a mental disorder.
The court heard that he visited her weekly and would phone her to tell her he would be arriving.
His victim gets flashbacks of the abuse and becomes anxious around 4pm as that was the time that he would typically call her saying he would be visiting.
Defence counsel Shelagh McCall QC said that Allan was running his own business employing 30 people when it went into liquidation in 2011.
She said that correlated to the time the offending began and added: “It appears the behaviour has begun in a time of great stress for him on the demise of that business.”
Allan, a former construction manager, was placed on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.
