Free to walk streets - the sexual predator PC who beat rape charges

The guilty verdicts will mean an end to Stewart's career with Strathclyde Police. His marriage is already over, and a jail sentence is almost inevitable. Although convicted of only three of the original 13 charges he had faced, the judge, Lord McEwan, said they were nonetheless "very serious".

One of the women Stewart was alleged to have raped attended court for the verdicts. In tears, she said: "I am not able to describe how I am feeling just now."

The jury of eight women and six men - one woman had been excused for personal reasons - had deliberated over three days at the end of a ten-week trial. The 13 charges spanned the period between 1998 and 2004 when Stewart, from Paisley, served in the force's U Division in Ayrshire. He was based at stations in Kilbirnie, Saltcoats and Irvine.

The prosecution alleged that he had used his uniform, his power and authority as the "perfect cover" to carry out a series of sexual offences against a total of nine vulnerable women. Stewart denied all the charges, three of rape and ten of indecent assault, and insisted that the incidents, with one exception, simply had not happened.

In the exception, he maintained that the woman had invited him to have sex and that, although married for only seven months to wife Gillian, also a serving police officer, he "capitulated" in a "moment of weakness".

However, the jury held that Stewart had abused his status as a constable when he abducted a young woman, a drug addict, by pretending there was a warrant out for her arrest and inducing her to get into a police van. Stewart drove the victim to a farm road near Beith, pulled down her trousers and assaulted her with his side-handled police baton.

The second woman who was assaulted, a 30-year-old mother of two, had been at a make-up party in a neighbour's house in Irvine, but she became heavily drunk and started breaking furniture and the police had to be called.

Stewart and a colleague attended and the woman had slumped into a stupor. While the colleague was out of the house, Stewart put his hand inside the woman's trousers. She came to, and "freaked out".

The third victim, then a schoolgirl aged 15, had become known to Stewart when he helped investigate her case which involved underage sex with a man in his 40s. She alleged that Stewart raped her after being called to her home in Dalry because she was drunk and fighting with her mother.

She said Stewart took her upstairs to her room to separate her from her mother and pushed her on to the bed and had sex. The jury acquitted Stewart of raping the girl, but wanted to convict him of a reduced charge of having underage sex with her while she consented. However, the judge directed that he had to be acquitted of the charge in any form.

The jury did find Stewart guilty, however, of using lewd and indecent behaviour towards the girl on another occasion, by attempting to touch her intimately and trying to have her place her hand on him.

In one of the other rape charges, it was alleged by a woman, 48, who had a severe drink problem, that Stewart pretended to arrest her in the street in Kilbirnie and drove her to "somewhere dark ... in countryside, trees and bushes everywhere". She said he had sex with her on the front seat of the car.

The jury decided that Stewart was not guilty of raping the woman.

A not-guilty verdict was also returned on the charge of raping the woman, 27, who attended the court yesterday. She had claimed that he came to her home in Irvine about 7:30 on a Sunday morning, pushed her on to a settee and forced himself on her. Stewart said in evidence that he had been in his car parked outside the woman's flat, and she beckoned him in and then seduced him.

The last of the charges was the alleged rape of a woman in Irvine, on 29 February 2004. Like others, she had not reported the incident, and it was some hours later when she was out walking her dog that she met her mother by chance. Distressed, the woman was asked what had happened and, on being told of the allegation, the mother took her straight to the local police station.

Stewart was suspended from duties and appeared in court a couple of days later on the charge of raping the woman. The court hearing attracted publicity and other women began to come forward. Yet more were discovered during the snowballing police investigation.

During the ten-week trial, the case again received much publicity and a woman attended the court building and asked for the Dean Stewart case. She was told that the courtroom was closed to the public because sensitive evidence was being led. However, there was a break in the proceedings and Stewart emerged into the public foyer, to be seen by the woman. She turned ashen-faced and, in tears, fled the building.

Because so many of the charges had only one witness - the women - for corroboration the Crown had to rely on what is known in Scots law as the Moorov doctrine. It is named after a Russian who ran a drapery business in Glasgow in the 1920s and was convicted of assaulting a number of his female employees. The doctrine allows separate crimes to be mutually corroborative when it can be shown that they are part of a course of conduct, and the circumstances are similar and not too distant in time.

In the Stewart case, the jury was told that the three rape charges could corroborate each other, as could four charges where there were other forms of assault, and also the six remaining charges.

Woman D: 'Arrested', driven to a country road and assaulted with a police baton

STEWART was convicted of taking woman D in a police van to a farm road where he assaulted her with his police baton.

Yesterday she spoke to The Scotsman about her ordeal, which took place when she was 18.

It had been a warm summer day and she was walking home following a visit to her father's house. As she turned into the main street of the small west coast country hamlet, a police van pulled up across the road and an officer she did not recognise stepped out and summoned her over, saying there was a warrant for her arrest.

Speaking from her home, the 24-year-old, who is still visibly shaken recalling the six-year-old memories, said it was the "worst day" of her life.

"He locked me in the back of the van and said he was taking me to the police station. I asked him why he was taking me the wrong way and he said he didn't want anyone to see I was being lifted. I started really wondering what was going on when he stopped the van along a farm road and came into the back where I was sitting."

Stewart then told the woman he was going to assault her with his police truncheon and removed her clothes before doing so.

"I felt really scared and kept hoping he would stop," she said. "He just kept staring at me the whole time and was very calm - his face was emotionless."

Stewart then jumped back over into the seats and started driving. Woman D demanded to be let out of the van before Stewart dumped her at the bottom of the road.

"I felt so weird. I remember talking to myself and repeating, 'He shouldn't be doing things like that'. I went home and sat in my room - I couldn't sleep. I felt sick and just not right."

Two days later, Woman D found the courage to go to the police to report the attack.

But Stewart was actually in the room while she was reporting the crime and she said he convinced his fellow officers that she was making the assault up.

She confided in a few family members but continued living with the fear that Stewart would strike again at any time.

Only when other victims of Stewart began coming forward and woman D's aunt contacted the police again was her complaint investigated.

"I am just trying to get on with my life now but it is hard, he's a monster, an evil monster," she said.

Girl F: 'He used his power to get what he wanted - he must have wanted to get back at women somehow'

STEWART was convicted of molesting Girl F when she was 15.

He had won the trust of her family after being called to their home because of worries over the teenager's relationship with an older neighbour.

After managing to help convict the 42-year-old man, who was placed on the sex offenders' register for preying on their daughter, Stewart struck up a friendship with the girl's family and often visited unannounced for cups of tea and biscuits.

Soon he was being treated like a member of the family. However, the policeman was to use his power to betray the family's trust in him when he abused and took advantage of one of their four children.

Six years later Girl F, who is a mother-of-one, says it is only now as an adult that she can fully realise the seriousness of what happened to her.

"I feel used and humiliated now. I don't know why he did it, he must have wanted to get back at women for some reason. I feel abused and taken advantage of.

"I stop sleeping sometimes now when I think about it because it's now that I realise what he has done. I will never forget. He is not a nice man and used his power to get what he wanted.

"There are two voices in my head - one that says it was my fault and the other which tells me he knew the law and knew I was so young.

"I have gone through so many feelings that I'm not sure how I feel, I'm numb to it all. You hear about some nightmares people go through but you never think it is going to happen to yourself."

Last year the woman finally broke down and told her mother what had happened after hearing about other women Stewart had attacked.

Her mother immediately called the police. "When I went to the line-up parade my legs just collapsed underneath me," said Woman F.

"He couldn't see me but it looked like he could through the mirror. He stuck out like a sore thumb. He looked scary and held his head high.

"He is a disgusting, sad man who should be given the death penalty. He has a sick mind.

"I don't blame the vetting by the police though, because they weren't to know what was going on in his mind when they allowed him into the force, but I have to admit I don't trust policemen now.

"I also push boyfriends away and I think it's because I have lost trust in men.

"The biggest part that bugs me about all of this is that he betrayed our trust.

"He was sleekit. He's a monster and looks like one, too."

Woman F is now trying to rebuild her life and is training to be a teacher but she says she has spent years looking over her shoulder thinking he might prey on her again.

"I am so angry that he got away with it for so long but I am getting on with my life now, although it is always going to be there. I feel a survivor now rather than a victim. There is so much badness in the world now that I really wish I had been born 500 years ago."