RAPIST DARREN SMITH JAILED OVER AYRSHIRE AND LANARKSHIRE ATTACKS
A sex offender who targeted children and women in attacks carried out for more than a decade was jailed for 13 and a half years this week.Darren Smith subjected two women and a teenager to rapes and abused a little girl between 2004 and 2020 at addresses in North Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire.
A judge told the 43-year-old that she read statements provided by victims who wrote movingly of the ways their lives were changed forever by his crimes.
Lady Hood told him at the High Court in Edinburgh that the nature and seriousness of the offences he was convicted of meant that the only appropriate way to deal with him was by a jail sentence.
The court heard that Smith had shown no empathy with the victims of his crimes.
Smith, formerly of Cheviot Head, Bourtreehill, Irvine, had earlier denied a series of charges but was convicted of five crimes - four of rape and one of penetrative sexual assault on a child.
The offences took place at addresses in Saltcoats, Stevenston and Irvine in Ayrshire and in Strathaven.
He carried out his first sex attack on a woman between September 2004 and January 2005 when he raped her at a house in Saltcoats.
A second woman was subjected to repeated rape assaults by Smith between 2015 and 2017 after he attacked and raped a teenager girl in November 2007 in Stevenston.
Smith's final crime was a sexual assault on a child under five years old on an occasion between February 2018 and February 2020.
The judge stated: "You acknowledge yourself that a custodial sentence is inevitable." Lady Hood said Smith had shown no empathy with his victims.
He was told he will be placed on the sex offenders' register indefinitely following his sentencing.
