A SEX attacker who assaulted a woman while she was asleep in bed with
her five-year-old daughter was jailed for seven years yesterday.
The girl pleaded with Michael Innes to leave her mother alone, but he
tried to persuade her to go back to sleep by promising to buy her
sweets.
Innes, 30, described as a prisoner, who has previously been sentenced
to five years for rape, admitted indecently assaulting the woman at her
Edinburgh home in September 1991. He also pleaded guilty to a breach of
the Bail Act by failing to turn up for trial in December last year.
Lord Milligan heard at the High Court in Edinburgh that the
26-year-old victim of the attack managed to escape from the bedroom with
her daughter and grabbed a potato knife before ordering Innes out of the
house.
She had been awakened by the accused, who was naked, committing an
indecent act. She needed medication for 18 months after the assault.
Mr James Reilly, defence counsel, told the court that his client had a
long-standing personality disorder, although psychiatrists had concluded
that there was no specific reason at this stage to regard him as a
continuing danger to women and children.
Lord Milligan told Innes that he had committed a very serious indecent
assault for which there was an apparent lack of remorse. The attack was
aggravated by the fact that it had taken place in the middle of the
night after the accused had entered the victim's home through an
upstairs window.
He jailed Innes for six years for the assault and sentenced him to a
further 15 months for his failure to appear at the earlier hearing,
which had caused the postponement of the trial when young children were
due to give evidence.
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