AN award-winning St Andrews University PhD student has admitted carrying out sex attacks on two women.
Pasquale Galianni, 31, who won the prestigious Cormack Prize of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2013, committed the assaults at St Andrews campus at North Haugh, on November 28, 2013 and April 10, this year.
Galianni had gone on trial at the High Court in Glasgow where his first victim, 1 9-year-old student, told the jury she was left terrified when he grabbed her, dragged her into undergrowth and pinned her to the ground.
However, Galianni admitted the offences half way through the trial.
Yesterday Judge Lord Burns placed Galianni on the sex offenders' register and deferred sentence on him.
Pasquale's first victim a 19-year-old student was grabbed by Galianni who tried to remove her tights and underwear. The attack happened around 5.30pm.
When asked how she felt she replied: "Terrified. He was very strong and I didn't think I would be able to push him off."
The student said: "I screamed and basically after I'd screamed he got up and ran off in the direction I'd just come from."
The second victim was attacked by Galianni on April 10 this year after he followed her, grabbed her, put his arms round her. He then placed one of his hands between her legs and grabbed her buttocks.
He was cleared on a third charge of raping a 26-year-old woman at a flat in Double Dykes Road, St Andrews, on April 9, while she was intoxicated and incapable of giving consent.
She told the court she had an alcoholic blackout and could not say if she had consented to sex with Galianni or not.
Galianni admitted having sex with the woman, but claimed it was consensual.
The rape charge was withdrawn by advocate depute David Taylor and Galianni was formally acquitted of the charge by judge Lord Burns.
The court heard that Galianni has a previous sex offence in Germany where he studied for a while.
Galianni was awarded the 2013 Cormack Prize of the Royal Society of Edinburgh for the best journal paper by a research student in Astronomy at a Scottish university.
Pasquale was working on testing cosmological models of dark matter versus modified gravity in the first part of his PhD at the department of Physics and Astronomy.
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