August 2023 Man jailed after being found guilty on serious sexual offences A 29-year-old man has been jailed for eight years after being found guilty of a number of serious sexual offences. Ruaraidh McCartney was found guilty of rapes involving three women on Wednesday, 5 July at the High Court in Glasgow. The offences were committed in Stirlingshire and Perthshire between 2011 and 2021. He was sentenced (Tuesday, 1 August) at the High Court in Lanark. All three women had begged the accused to stop during what began as consensual sexual encounters but turned increasingly violent and forced. One woman was repeatedly raped by McCartney at addresses in and around Crieff, Perthshire, between January 2011 and April 2013. She said he had “got a thrill out of seeing her in pain”, and had also kicked her, headbutted her, part-strangled her, pulled her nipples and beaten her buttocks. Another woman, who lived with him in Stirling for nearly two years, said that in the autumn or winter of 2019, they had started having sex when she became uncomfortable and asked him to stop. She tried to leave the room, but he grabbed her, pushed her down and carried on. The woman said she was left in floods of tears, while McCartney simply smirked afterwards. She told the jury: “It’s a look I remember to this day.” He was arrested after raping the third complainer, an Alloa woman described as his “on-off girlfriend” on September 18, 2021, after they’d gone clubbing. The court heard he laughed when she told him he was being too rough and had begged him to stop. After he refused, she pulled on some pyjamas, grabbed her phone and ran from the house before calling the police “hysterical”. Officers sped to the scene and found her sitting on the pavement near her home, crying and “rocking”, and initially so distressed she was unable to speak. McCartney, 29, was arrested still inside her house, with officers finding him in her bed. At the end of a seven-day trial on Wednesday, July 5, a jury found McCartney, of Crieff, guilty of raping all three women – the first one repeatedly.