Man, 70, jailed for binding women at knifepoint

A PENSIONER who bound and gagged a woman at knifepoint to take pictures for his fetish website was jailed yesterday.

Alexander McAuslan (right) attempts to shield his face outside Dumbarton Sheriff Court. Picture: Stewart Robertson

Alexander McAuslan pretended he was a photographer who needed pictures of women posing for a lifestyle magazine.

But the 70-year-old actually wanted pictures of women in real terror for a new fetish website he was setting up called Women in Peril. He created a fake persona, which included business cards and spoke to his victim on the phone about modelling for him. He then met her at a Costa Coffee branch in Helensburgh where he told her he was a photographer who had been engaged by a client and wanted photographs of women posing for use in advertisements.

McAuslan then persuaded her to come to his semi-detached home in a cul-de-sac in the quiet village of Renton, West Dunbartonshire.

He had set up a photography studio in his home and, during the session, he tricked his 49-year-old victim into kneeling on the floor and putting her hands behind her back.

Once he had duped her into kneeling on the floor he pounced, grabbed her hands, bound them behind her back with cable ties, duct-taped her mouth closed and tried to pull goggles over her face.

As he tried to pull the goggles down over her eyes she spotted the knife and roll of duct tape lying next to her. She managed to escape and raise the alarm which led to McAuslan being arrested and charged for subjecting the woman to the terrifying ordeal.

McAuslan later claimed that, after photographing the woman, he would have cut her free and asked her to consent to the pictures being used on his website. Earlier this year he pleaded guilty to lying to the woman about being a photographer and assaulting her on 2 May, last year.

Sentence was deferred so he could be assessed by social workers and a psychiatrist and he returned to the dock at Dumbarton Sheriff Court yesterday to learn his fate.

Sheriff Maxwell Hendry said it was the strangest case he had ever dealt with in his 35-year.

He jailed McAuslan for 27 months, reduced from three years as he admitted his guilt and told him he will be supervised for 12 months when he is released.