By Ashlie McAnally
The FORMER chairman of UKip in Scotland has made his first public appearance at court to face a string of sexual offences.
Arthur Thackeray, 55, faces 12 charges spanning eight years between October 2007 and December 2015, involving 12 different women.
All of the charges are said to have taken place at his home in Glasgow's East End, at 1 Colme Street, Edinburgh and "elsewhere".
UKIP Scotland leader and MEP David Coburn's office is at the same address in the capital.
The case called at Glasgow Sheriff Court on Wednesday where Thackeray denied the charges.
His lawyer withdrew from acting due to problems with legal aid and the court appointed another lawyer for Thackeray.
One of the charges Thackeray faces is an alleged breach of the peace by making sexual remarks over the phone to a woman and her 14-year-old daughter and telling them he was watching a "sexually explicit video".
The other 11 charges are for allegedly "communicating indecently".
These include contacting women by telephone, "uttering sexual remarks" and "directing sexual questions" at some of them, as well as causing some to believe he was watching adult material while talking to them.
The case was continued until a later date
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