A SEX attacker who targeted two students from St Andrews University had carried out three similar attacks in Germany.
Award-winning Pasquale Galianni has admitted two street attacks at St Andrews campus at North Haugh, on November 28, 2013 and April 10, this year.
Judge Lord Burns has ordered a risk assessment of the danger the 31-year-old, who won the prestigious Cormack Prize of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2013, poses to women.
After pleading guilty at the High Court in Glasgow, it emerged that the astrophysics student has previously offended when he lived in Germany in 2006.
Advocate depute David Taylor, prosecuting, told the court: "The accused has no previous convictions in the United Kingdom, but has a conviction from the time he spent in Germany for an offence described as 'sexual coercion'."
The judge said: "There are three incidents in 2006 which mirror quite closely what happened on two occasions."
Galianni had originally denied the charges facing him in Scotland but changed his plea halfway through the trial. One of his victims, a 19-year-old student, had already told the court how she was grabbed, dragged into undergrowth and pinned to the ground by him as she walked towards her accommodation on campus on April 10 this year.
Sentence was deferred until next month at the High Court in Edinburgh.
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