MOTHERWELL RAPIST GIVEN LIFE OVER LATEST ATTACK
A scar-faced sex attacker was jailed for life yesterday after a judge branded him a danger to women.Convicted rapist Graham McGill struck again 18 years after he was first ordered to be detained for sex assaults.
McGill, 37, attacked a stranger as she made her way home from a night out earlier this year, in an incident that left the victim robbed of her self-confidence.
The 24-year woman was seized in a dark courtyard and forced to the ground.
She was punched and McGill tried to stifle her cries by putting his hand over her mouth.
But the victim fought back and clawed at his face and neck and managed to scream out for help.
McGill was chased away by a young man alerted to the woman's distress, and was arrested soon afterwards with fingernail scratches on his face and neck.
DNA material from under the victim's fingernails showed that McGill was her attacker.
Lord Nimmo Smith told him at the High Court in Edinburgh: 'You attacked a complete stranger in a dark lane and subjected her to what must have been a terrifying ordeal.
She said her life had changed completely.
She used to be outgoing and confident but is now a nervous wreck.
You have done great harm to her.' McGill, of Winning Quadrant, Craigneuk, Lanarkshire, was earlier found guilty of assaulting the woman with intent to rape her in Motherwell on March 27 this year.
He was previously sentenced to six years in 1981 for two sex attacks - a rape and an assault with intent to ravish.
The victim of the current attack had rowed earlier in the evening with her boyfriend after a night at a club in Motherwell.
McGill had also been at the club and had followed his target as she walked home before seizing her.
McGill, who denied the offence, claimed that he was in a strange area looking for a taxi and caught up with the woman to ask her where to get a cab.
After McGill was convicted of the latest sex attack, sentence was deferred until yesterday for psychiatric and background reports.
One leading psychiatrist said there was concern that the sex attacker continued to pose 'a significant degree of risk to women'.
Lord Nimmo Smith said McGill should serve four years before being considered for parole.
He also ordered that he should be put on the sex offenders' register.
