A FORMER policeman who sexually abused four girls and two boys over 25 years has been jailed for 11 years.
The High Court in Glasgow heard James Ainsworth, 62, told two of his female victims: "I'm a police officer, no-one will believe you."
He pleaded guilty to seven charges of sexual abuse and one of rape, committed between 1965 and 1990 in Ayrshire and Dumfrieshire.
Ainsworth admitted the offences as a second trial against him was about to start. The first trial had to be abandoned after he was assaulted outside court.
Judge Norman Ritchie QC told Ainsworth: "I was going to sentence you to 12 years, but I'm prepared to give you a discount of a year as there was no need for the victims to testify for a second time."
Judge Ritchie also placed Ainsworth on the sex offenders' register.
Defence QC Andrew Lamb said: "Mr Ainsworth had some difficulty in coming to terms with the offences."
Advocate depute Kath Harper, prosecuting, said Ainsworth's predatory sexual behaviour began when he was 14. He started touching an eight-year-old girl's breasts and progressed to raping her once when she was between eight and nine.
The court heard Ainsworth sexually abused three other girls - one of them in the Ayrshire police house.
Ainsworth told the girl, who was six: "No-one will believe you. I am a police officer and something bad will happen to your mum."
The court heard one of Ainsworth's male victims was sexually abused from the age of five. Ainsworth would pretend to be Spiderman before sexually abusing the boy.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article