Risk assessment ordered on Commonwealth Pool rapist who targeted victim in Edinburgh Travelodge

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Stephen Charters attacked the 18-year-old in Edinburgh after she made a "cry for help" to him during a catalogue of sex offending he carried out.

Lady Carmichael made a risk assessment order on him at the High Court in Edinburgh after taking into account recommendations in an initial report prepared on Charters, along with his history of offending and the latest sex crimes he was convicted of earlier this year.

Such a move can result in the imposition of an Order for Lifelong Restriction on the sex offender.

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Charters, 56, a former bus driver and community worker, had denied a string of charges during a trial but was convicted of nine crimes, including rape, sexual assault and indecent conduct towards four victims committed between November 1984 and October 2015.

He was previously jailed for five years in 2016 for sexual offending against children dating back to 1977.

During the latest trial he claimed that sex with the teenager who came to him seeking help was consensual but she told the court that it made her feel "horrible inside". She said: "I just felt sick."

The vulnerable victim had rowed with a boyfriend and was facing difficulties with accommodation. Charters said he would try and find her a hotel.

She later told police that she was "upset and emotional" at the time following her break up. She said: "I thought once he got to the hotel room he was going to go and I would get the room to myself." But instead she said Charters "forced himself" on her at a Travelodge hotel and carried out sex attacks on her and raped her in October 2015

The court heard that she had previously attended a church in Leven, in Fife, where he acted as a worship leader. She was in contact with him through social media.

Prosecutor Steven Borthwick said the woman had made "a cry for help" to Charters. He replied: "Yes, I suppose you could put it that way. I went over to help her out because she had no accommodation and she was scared."

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Charters said that in 1984 he was involved with a Baptist church in Edinburgh but had become a Christian "years before".

Sentence was deferred on Charters until November 9 at the High Court in Airdrie.

His 2016 trial heard Charters began his crimes as a boy and continued into adulthood.

He had denied the offences but was found guilty of five charges of indecent behaviour and two of rape between 1977 and 1997.

The serial offender carried out sex crimes between 1977 and 1997 in the Borders, Midlothian and Lanarkshire.

He was convicted of sexual offending from the age of 12 - the youngest age for prosecution in Scotland.

Charters began by molesting a younger girl at a house in the Borders, exposing himself and carrying out sex acts from when she was nine. He raped her when she was 11 years old.

He later abused a second girl at a house in Midlothian and at the Royal Commonwealth Pool in Edinburgh before raping her.

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