An Aberdeen man has told a jury he had sex with a 15-year-old girl – but says it wasn’t rape.
Blair Thomson, who also admitted having sexual relations with a 13-year-old girl, is standing trial at the High Court in Aberdeen.
The 23-year-old unemployed construction labourer denies raping the teenager at his former home in Urquhart Road in August 2017.
He claims the intercourse was consensual.
The court was told the pair met through social media and Thomson insists he ceased contact with her when he discovered she was “younger than she said”.
‘She told me she was 16’
Thomson told the jury how he “froze” when he realised the girl now accusing him of rape was just 15 and still at school.
“She mentioned something about school to me but as far as I was aware she was going to college,” he said.
“I sat for about half an hour in shock then she left. I didn’t speak to her and later we spoke via messages and that’s when I ended it because I had found out her real age. She told me she was 16 going on 17.”
Thomson is accused of having sex with a 13-year-old girl, too.
Giving evidence he admitted knowing she was 13 when they first made contact in the summer of 2019, again through social media.
‘It became intimate’
He said: “We started having not full sexual relations … but there were things that happened.
“It became intimate. At the time I wasn’t really thinking. The only way I saw it was that someone was there. It was nice to have somebody, albeit it was wrong.”
He said the sexual activities between them were consensual but denied the pair had full penetrative sex.
Speaking of the moment he decided to stop contacting the 13-year-old, he said: “There was a day I was sitting thinking about things and it hit me that it was not a good idea.
“It was something I shouldn’t be doing, it was wrong and I am the bad one.”
Defence counsel David Moggach said his client had offered a “full, candid and honest account of what took place because he accepted certain parts of the allegations”.
Prosecuting, advocate depute Margaret Barron asked Thomson why stopped contacting the 15-year-old when he realised she was only 15 yet felt what he did with the 13-year-old was acceptable less than two years later.
Thomson replied: “I was going through a bad time with my mental health and she was there willing to be a person that was there for me.”
Thomson, of Northfield Place, also faces four charges of sending and sharing indecent communications with five girls, all under the age of 16.
The trial, before Lord Harrower, continues.
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