PAISLEY MAN FACES LIFE FOR RAPE AND ASSAULT
A MAN awaiting trial for raping a 17-year-old girl subjected his cell mate to a vicious sex attack.James McColgan, 21, faces a possible life sentence after a judge ruled he seemed to be a public menace.
McColgan, formerly of Johnstone, Renfrewshire, halted an earlier trial by admitting the rape in Paisley last September and torturing and sexually assaulting a 17-year-old youth in Polmont Young Offenders' Institution the following month.
He was due to be sentenced at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday but after reading background reports, judge Lady Dorrian said she was considering imposing an order for lifelong restriction.
That would mean keeping McColgan in jail until the parole board considered it safe to release him, then keeping him under supervision for the rest of his life.
The court heard how a teenage girl student was stabbed and raped by McColgan after trying to escape by running naked into a back garden.
The girl's ordeal had begun when McColgan flew into a jealous rage after finding a text message on her mobile phone from an ex-boyfriend.
McColgan held her captive in a flat in Saucel Crescent, Paisley, punched her in the face, ordered her to strip, made her hack off her hair and stabbed her in the leg with scissors.
When the 17-year-old tried to get her clothes, which McColgan had thrown out of a window, he forced her back into the flat.
He put a pillow over her head and repeatedly threatened to kill her.
The terrified girl was found, clutching a sheet round her, by McColgan's mum and later told her family she'd been raped.
McColgan was arrested and sent to Polmont, where he subjected an inmate to a nine-hour ordeal.
He plunged the youth's hand into a kettle of boiling water, burned him with a cigarette, stabbed him with a pen and sexually assaulted him.
The youth screamed during the night-time attack but no-one came to his aid.
McColgan was remanded in custody to face court again in July.
