Man jailed for two years for bus sex assaults
A MAN who groped lone women on buses has been given jailed for two years and placed on the sex offenders register.
Alan Gray, 59, sat behind his victims and slid his hand between the seats, putting his hand up one woman’s top and rubbing another on the back.
Gray, who was banned from public transport at the time, previously admitted assaulting three strangers in Edinburgh, but claimed he could not remember doing it because he was drunk.
However, Sheriff Kenneth MacIver rejected Gray’s claim at Edinburgh Sheriff Court today and jailed him for two years, ordering he be supervised under licence for a further three years after his release.
“You knew exactly what you were doing, you simply don’t want to accept the consequences,” said Sheriff MacIver.
“You are a sex offender who is likely to commit further sexually motivated crimes. I am concerned to ensure that the public is adequately protected from serious harm.”
Gray, a prisoner in Edinburgh Prison, was previously jailed for 15 months for assault with intent to rape and has been graded at medium to high risk of re-offending.
His latest exploits were exposed after he was identified in CCTV footage taken on the buses.
Unemployed Gray had rubbed a 25-year-old woman on the body on the top deck of a bus at Gilmerton Road and Drum Street in Edinburgh at 9am on June 13 last year.
He carried out a similar assault on a 21-year-old on a bus in Gilmerton Road on October 5 last year.
He then repeatedly touched a 47-year-old woman’s body and tried to touch her breast on the lower deck of a bus between Princes Street and Roseburn Terrace at 5pm on April 4 this year.
Defence agent Gordon Stewart said: “He accepts that his behaviour was wholly inappropriate and distressing for his victims.”
