‘Very high risk’ sex offender left to rape woman

Glasgow High Court. Picture: John Devlin

Daniel Welsh pounced on the 25-year-old stranger as she walked to meet a friend for dinner in Aberdeen in February.

Welsh, 22, subjected the woman to a 90-minute ordeal, having earlier left his pregnant girlfriend to “cool off”.

He yesterday admitted abduction and rape at the High Court in Glasgow. It emerged Welsh was a convicted sex offender at the time and was being monitored by an offender management unit in Aberdeen, having been assessed as “very high risk”.

Welsh had also twice breached a court order banning him from going near girls under the age of 17.

Prosecutors are now moving for Welsh to be handed a life sentence when he returns to court in September.

Welsh had been playing his Xbox before telling his 17-year-old girlfriend Caroline Donald he was going to the shops to “cool off”.

The court heard the woman was walking in Urquhart Road in Aberdeen when she was grabbed from behind.

Welsh told her: “Don’t do anything stupid because I am going to shoot you.”

He then forced the woman to walk with him but claimed he just wanted to talk to her.

He took her into an isolated area beside a nearby cemetery. Welsh told the woman that he was due to get married in two weeks, but that his bride-to-be had killed herself.

Prosecutor Mark McGuire said: “The woman described her fear, but felt she could not run away in case he shot her.”

The victim eventually begged to leave, but this sent Welsh into a rage. He demanded the woman strip and raped her.

Welsh then made her walk with him again, this time to a bird observatory around 30 minutes away.

He soon forced the now freezing woman to have sex with him three more times.

Mr McGuire: “She had pleaded with him for he had promised her that they would not do this again – but he told her to do as asked or he would shoot her.”

He eventually told his victim to get dressed and walked with her to Aberdeen’s Pittodrie stadium before fleeing.

The advocate depute told the court: “He said that he was sorry and that he should not have done what he did.”

The victim went home and immediately texted a friend to say she had been raped. Police were contacted and a major inquiry was launched.

Welsh, meantime, went home and complained to his girlfriend that he had a sore head. He cleaned his clothes and stuck his trainers in the washing machine.

His partner noticed the next morning that he had checked on the internet to read about an attack that had happened the night before.

Describing the woman’s ordeal, Judge Lady Rae told him: “I have nothing much to say today except that horrific is too mild a word for the set of circumstances I have heard.”