EDINBURGH SERIAL RAPIST BRIAN DODDS JAILED FOR NEARLY 30 YEARS OF OFFENCES
JUSTICE finally caught up with a serial rapist who preyed on handicapped women when he was jailed yesterday for offences dating back nearly 30 years.Lady Cosgrove sentenced Brian Dodds, 48, to 11 years, telling him that he remained a danger to women while at liberty and there was a risk that he might re-offend.
Dodds was convicted by a jury of raping four women, two of them handicapped.
He has previously been sentenced to five years in December 1987 for another attack on a severely handicapped victim.
Dodds, of Ferry Road Drive, Edinburgh, struck fear into women in city housing estates in the 1970s and was convicted after a three week trial of raping his victims in Niddrie and Craigmillar.
He also faced a further three rape charges but the jury found these not proven.
All the charges involved different women.
Dodds gave evidence to the effect that some of the women had agreed to have sex with him and that in other cases there had been no sexual contact.
The first victim, now 44, told the High Court in Edinburgh that she had lost her virginity to Dodds at the age of 14 when he attacked her in the garden of a block of flats.
She had been babysitting and was on her way home when Dodds, then aged about 18 and on weekend leave from borstal, grabbed hold of her and pulled her to the ground.
She also told how on a later occasion Dodds had raped her in the grounds of a nursery school.
Dodds' next victim, now aged 55, has suffered from cerebral palsy since she was born.
She told the court that in the early 1970s, when she was about 28 and living in the Craigmillar district of Edinburgh her husband wanted to take in Dodds as a lodger.
He was then 20 or 21.
She had warned against it 'because I thought he had wandering hands' but Dodds had arrived at the house one night and raped her while her seven-year-old son was asleep in the same room.
She explained: 'I did not want to press charges because I was frightened of reprisals.' A profoundly deaf 46-year-old woman gave evidence through a sign language interpreter of how Dodds had raped her at her home in Craigmillar more than 20 years ago.
He had appeared in her bedroom, probably after climbing through a window, and although she struggled Dodds was too strong to resist.
'I never went to the police because I was frightened to death of him,' she told the court.
The fourth victim, now aged 37, was about 16 and living in a hostel when she went to a party in a house in the Niddrie area of Edinburgh some time in 1978.
She described how Dodds had forced himself on her in an ordeal lasting all night but after she had staggered back to her family home her mother refused to believe her story.
Police began investigating Dodds about two years ago after one of the women in the other charges against him confided in her boyfriend.
In December 1987, again at the High Court in Edinburgh, Dodds was convicted by a jury of repeatedly raping a 37-year-old woman in her home in the Muirhouse district of the city.
Lord Brand told him: 'This case was aggravated by the fact that your victim was quite plainly an unfortunate woman who was severely physically and mentally handicapped.
All women must be protected against conduct such as yours.' Jailing Dodds at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday Lady Cosgrove told him: 'You have been found guilty of four charges of rape.
In the case of each offence the victim was a vulnerable young woman.' The judge said she had been provided with three psychological reports and a report from a forensic psychiatrist which indicated that he presented a degree of risk to women.
It was important to attempt to engage Dodds in a treatment regime.
Taking account of the fact that the risk of Dodds re-offending was considered to be relatively high and he was a danger to women when at liberty she had decided to sentence him to 11 years.
