Stornoway church officer gets three years for sex offences

A FORMER church office bearer has been jailed for three years for sex offences against three women.

Angus Donald Mackay, from Cearn Shiaraim, Stornoway, Lewis, had been convicted after a week-long trial in August.

A jury at Stornoway Sheriff Court found the 61-year-old guilty of three counts of indecent assault against three women, as well as two charges of indecency against two of them when they were aged between 12 and 16.

The allegations spanned 20 years, from the 1980s to the mid-2000s.

Mackay, who is well-known in the island community through his church work and former job as a mobile bakery salesman-driver, was sentenced at the same court yesterday.

David Brookens, defending, said Mackay believed a “dreadful error has taken place and the jury got it wrong”.

But Sheriff David Sutherland said Mackay had committed five serious sex offences including “girls as young as 12 or 13”.

He said the trial had been a “harrowing experience” for the victims, witnesses and all the families involved, including the accused’s.

Mackay, a former office bearer at Stornoway High Church, was placed on the sex offenders register.