A man has been jailed for a year after admitting sexually assaulting another man in Tain.
Mark Mackay, now living in Paisley, had previously admitted committing a sex act after entering the victim’s bedroom on January 4, 2015.
The 22-year-old was jailed for 12 months and placed on the sex offender’s register by Sheriff Gordon Fleetwood, who called the incident a “serious offence”.
Mackay’s solicitor Willie Young told the court that at the time of the offence his client had been “gainfully employed” for around a year-and-a-half in a restaurant.
Mr Young said the victim was known to Mackay and the two kept in contact using social media.
The solicitor said the victim was returning from a period working away and he said it was accepted that the man “was under the influence of alcohol” while Mackay was sober.
However, Mr Young said that Mackay “cannot recall the incident”.
He said he could recall “in detail” the lead-up to the incident but not the event itself.
He added that Mackay had “not sought to deflect blame” and accepted forensic evidence found in the subsequent investigation.
Mr Young said his client had not been in trouble before and recognised the “extremely serious” nature of the offence.
The solicitor called for a non-custodial sentence to be considered, given that Mackay was first offender.
However, Sheriff Fleetwood sentenced Mackay to a year’s imprisonment and added him to the sex offender’s register, having considered three separate reports – two of them carried out by different departments of Renfrewshire Council and a third carried out by the Pathways Partnership Project.
The sheriff told Mackay: “Basically it appears that you took advantage of an intoxicated man for your own sexual gratification.”