Man who subjected woman to terrifying ordeal in Hawick is jailed

Andrew Kerr, who is 27, bit the horrified woman in the neck, leaving her screaming, and marked her face and body with blood and licked her face during the assault in August 2017 at a house in Hawick.

At the High Court in Edinburgh, Kerr denied assaulting and raping the woman and claimed: “I struggle to bite hard down on things. I can't bite down that hard without causing myself excruciating pain.”

However, Kerr, formerly of Fairhurst Drive in the town, was found guilty of the offence along with three other rapes and a sexual assault charge involving a further three victims, which he had also denied.

He began his catalogue of sex crimes when he was a 13-year-old schoolboy in November 2007 when he subjected a girl, who was the same age, to a rape ordeal near The Five Sisters zoo at Polbeth, in West Lothian, and pinned her down and put a hand round her neck and throttled her during the painful assault.

The girl told the court he tried to kiss her and said: “I told him to stop. I didn't want to.”

She struggled with him and started crying.

Kerr struck again in December 2015 when he attacked an 18-year-old girl who visited a house he was living at in Kenilworth Rise, in Livingston, in West Lothian.

She had gone to the address with a girlfriend and they were having a laugh with Kerr, who was nicknamed Spike. She said she fell asleep and was carried upstairs by Kerr to his bedroom.

The woman said that Kerr started kissing her and molesting her and she said 'no'. She told police: “He wouldn't stop”.

“I didn't want to do anything with him. I was telling him to stop, but he just kept going. I was saying 'no' and it didn't make a difference,” she said.

The woman told prosecutor Bill McVicar that after the assault and rape on her she was “upset, numb and angry”.

She said: “He took advantage. If somebody says 'no' it means 'no'.”

She told her friend about what had happened to her.

Kerr went on to carry out a sex attack on another woman at a house in Mid Calder, in West Lothian, in January 2016, grabbing her by the body and pinning her down on a sofa.

In January the following year he raped a further victim at a house in Hawick after putting his hands around her throat and compressing her neck. During the attack he pulled down her bra and put a lit cigarette near to her face and breast.

The woman was also subjected to the later biting attack before she was raped on a second occasion. Kerr had told her he had a split personality and could not control it any more. She was pinned to a bed and he said: “The other guy is winning.”

Mr McVicar told jurors that Kerr had embarked on a course of criminal conduct with a view to satisifying his own sexual urges.

Kerr told the court: “I have never raped any of these women. I am not a violent person.”

After the jury returned its verdicts the trial judge remanded Kerr, who had been on bail, in custody for the preparation of a background report.

He was placed on the sex offenders' register and is due to be sentenced at the High Court in Glasgow next month.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​