December 2018

Sex attacker jailed for eight years for catalogue of abuse in Borders, Midlothian and Fife

A man has been jailed for a catalogue of violence and sex attacks against five women in the Borders, Midlothian and Fife over a 10-year period.

Oliver Dalgleish, 28, was sentenced to eight years in jail today, December 7, at the High Court in Edinburgh by judge Lady Maggie Scott.

She also ordered that he be kept under supervision for three years after his release from prison and that his name be put on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely.

His crimes were committed between December 2006 and October 2016 in Jedburgh, Edinburgh, Gorebridge, Musselburgh, Crombie, Dumfermline and Rosyth.

Officers from Police Scotland’s domestic abuse task force began to investigate allegations of abuse against Dalgleish, of Rosyth, in November 2016 and he was subsequently charged in June this year.

Dalgleish denied abusing the women but went on trial at the High Court in Edinburgh in September and was found guilty of a catalogue of serious sexual and violent offences.

Sentencing was adjourned until today for reports.

The court heard that Dalgleish raped two of the women in Fife and the Borders between 2006 and 2016, assaulted two other women in Fife and Midlothian between 2008 and 2010 and put a fifth woman in a state of fear and alarm by calling her abusive names in 2013.

Defence advocate Susan Duff said: “He accepted he had been physically violent towards his partners, but he does not accept that he raped them.”

She added that it ought to be taken into account that Dalgleish was only 16 at the time of the first offences.