Rapists win damages over prison toilet facilities

Two rapists have won damages for a breach of their human rights over prison toilet conditions as more than a 1000 slopping out claims in Scotland remain outstanding.

The notorious Da Vinci Code rapist Robert Greens and another sex offender were each awarded 500 after having to queue to empty chemical toilets in Peterhead prison before changes in the system were brought in.

Greens, 33, who was jailed for 10 years for attacking a 19-year-old Dutch student near to the historic Rosslyn Chapel, in Midlothian, in 2005 earlier told a court that he "felt let down by the system" when he had to use a porta potti chemical toilet at the Aberdeenshire jail.

He said: "I felt dirty, angry, frustrated. I wanted to explode at times."

He said the smell when using the toilet in his single occupancy cell was "quite sickening" and added: "Sometimes I would boke."

Greens and two other sex attackers, Orkney fisherman Robert Stanger, 42, who was jailed for eight years following a double rape conviction in 2005 and rapist Thomas Wilson, 26, from Glasgow who was sentenced to six and a half years in 2008, each raised actions for judicial review at the Court of Session in Edinburgh. Wilson did not receive damages.

They were selected as "illustrative cases" for outstanding slopping out claims brought by inmates following the initial victory of robber Robert Napier who won 2450 in 2004.

They alleged that the conditions of their detention violated their rights under the European Convention of Human Rights and amounted to "inhuman and degrading treatment". All three sought payouts of 10,000.

It was claimed that they suffered as a result of the fault and negligence of the Scottish Government, the Scottish Prison Service and the jail governor.

They alleged they felt worthless and degraded by the conditions of their imprisonment and suffered loss of self esteem and claimed their human dignity was diminished.

But a judge has ruled that there was no breach of Article 3 of the ECHR and said: "I do not consider that their human dignity was diminished by the conditions of their incarceration or that they were thereby subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment."

However Lady Dorrian held that there was an infringement of two of the sex offenders Article 8 right to respect for private life when inmates had to queue to slop out their porta pottis before the introduction of a work party to carry out the task in 2007.