A Highland man has been warned to expect a lengthy jail sentence after being found guilty of molesting a child and raping two women.
Niyel Lennock, 28, had denied all the charges during a trial at the High Court in Inverness.
He claimed that some of the encounters had been consensual, while others simply had not happened.
But on the second day of deliberations, a jury returned verdicts of guilty on all but one of the charges before them.
Lennock was convicted of six charges of rape and one of sexual assault against two women, as well as one count of sexually assaulting a primary school-aged child.
Lennock was also found guilty of abusive behaviour towards three women, as well as threatening to disclose and disclosing intimate photographs of a former partner.
He was cleared of one count of rape.
‘What big boys and girls do’
The crimes happened at locations in Invergordon, Evanton, Alness, Muir of Ord, Dingwall and Dundee between 2016 and 2022.
In recorded evidence played for the jury by advocate depute Martin Crawford, Lennock’s child victim told how he had touched her over and under her clothing before asking her to keep it a secret from her mother and buying her currency for an online game.
She said: “He kept putting his hands down my trousers and he was putting his hand down my pants under my trousers.”
The child said she “didn’t like it” and asked Lennock to stop.
“He said ‘maybe when we are older I’ll get to do it again – that’s what big boys and girls do’.”
The child said that Lennock also said “he would buy me whatever I wanted if I showed him my privates” adding: “It would be a secret between me and you.”
The child told her mother and family friends about the incident the following day and police were called.
Lennock denied the child’s account saying: “It definitely did not happen.”
A forensic expert told the jury that Lennock’s DNA had been found inside the girl’s underwear.
Adult rape victim
One of Lennock’s adult victims told the court that: “He used his arms to pin me down – he had his knee between my legs” during a sexual assault.
Speaking of a rape, she said: “I kept telling him no” and confirmed that she was crying as the crime took place.
She said: “It was not long after I started crying that he got up and then he stormed out.”
Giving evidence in his own defence Lennock said: “I didn’t force her.”
Another woman described how Lennock told her: “I’ll have it if I want it.”
The jury heard that when she told Lennock “no” he “flipped her onto her front and had sex with her anyway”
“She said that she was crying,” Mr Crawford told jurors during his closing speech.
Denying charges against that victim Lennock said: “I was with multiple different women, I would never need to rape her.”
Jury took a day to find Lennock guilty
Summing up the case, the advocate depute said Lennock was “obsessed with the idea that these women are sluts” and felt “that these women are his to do with as he pleases.”
Speaking for the defence Edward Targowski KC reminded the jury of Lennock’s denials of the crimes as well as the forensic expert’s concession in evidence that they “cannot exclude” that Lennock’s DNA had been transferred to the child’s underwear indirectly.”
Referencing Lennock’s own concession that he had used social media and a swinging website to meet multiple women he said: “As far as Niyel is concerned, unfortunately that was the way he was living his life.”
He asked: “Is it criminal? In my submission it is not.”
The jury took a full day of deliberation before finding Lennock guilty of all but one charge.
‘A catalogue of very serious offences’
Following the verdict Judge Summers told Lennock: “The jury have found you guilty of a catalogue of very serious offences.
“It is quite clear that there will be no alternative available to the court other than to impose a lengthy custodial sentence.”
The judge adjourned sentencing for reports until next month at the High Court in Aberdeen and remanded Lennock, whose address was given as a prisoner in Perth, in custody in the meantime.
He also placed Lennock on the sex offenders register with immediate effect.
