A foster father found guilty of sexually abusing young girls in his care already had a conviction for lewd and libidinous behaviour when he was approved to look after children.
Aberdeen City Council confirmed yesterday it was aware of the conviction when he and his wife were approved as foster parents in 1993 but did not consider he posed a risk.
However, he was deregistered in 2001 after a complaint by a youngster which was investigated but did not result in a prosecution.
William Alexander, 57, was found guilty yesterday of molesting three of his foster children in the 1990s. In June 1979 the van driver was found guilty of lewd and libidinous behaviour and practices with a youngster and was fined £80.
During his trial this week Aberdeen Sheriff Court heard Alexander abused two 14-year-old girls and one seven-year-old girl between 1995 and 1997. One of the teenagers was lying in her bed when Alexander sneaked into her room and sexually assaulted her. He similarly abused a second teenager and a seven-year-old girl on separate occasions at his home in Cairnfield Road in Aberdeen.
Fiscal depute Duncan MacKenzie told the jury: "You are considering whether the accused sexually abused these three complainers.
"The very nature of these charges are that they usually occur in circumstances where it's the complainers' word against the accused about what happened. This has been a difficult case and you have heard harrowing stories."
During three days of evidence one of his victims had told the court that she had been assaulted after having been taken home drunk. Mr MacKenzie said: "She told you in graphic details what was done to her in the bedroom by the accused and how she felt when that was happening.
"Drunk or not, she was fully aware of what was being done to her and by whom. Three girls, unknown to each other, were spoken to independently by police. Each complainer had their own reasons for not disclosing at that time or later."
The jury took 40 minutes to find Alexander guilty. Sheriff Colin Harris deferred sentence until April 5 for the preparation of reports and placed Alexander on the sex offenders' register.
Outside court neighbours shouted abuse at Alexander, who had a leather jacket draped over his head.
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