Man who waterboarded and burnt women with blowtorch during rapes jailed

Lewis Grant subjected three women to a series of attacks at university halls in Musselburgh and Stirling.

Lewis Grant who waterboarded and burnt women with a blowtorch during series of rapes jailed SNS Group

A former Army reservist has been jailed for 11 and a half years after raping three young women at a university halls of residence and student flats.

Lewis Grant throttled two of the victims to the stage where one woman passed out during a catalogue of sex crimes.

One woman was burnt with a blow torch, “waterboarded” with prosecco and choked until she thought she was going to die.

A judge said that in one assault Grant perpetrated with a riding crop bought from a sex shop a woman was hit so hard that it broke.

Grant, 28, had denied a series of offences during an earlier trial but was found guilty of six offences, including three rapes and two assaults to danger of life.

He began his offending as a schoolboy in 2011 when he had unlawful sex with an underage 15-year-old girl at bushes in a park in Dumfries.

But he then went on to commit rapes and assaults against adult women between 2014 and 2019 including at halls at Queen Margaret University in Musselburgh, East Lothian, and at addresses in Bridge of Allan and Stirling, where he was a student at the university and in the Officer Training Corps.

His first rape victim, who was aged 19, told his earlier trial that Grant forced himself on her, while a 21-year-old student he subjected to rapes in Stirling was also grabbed by the face and lifted off the floor after he put his hands round her neck, leaving her choking.

Another 20-year-old woman was strangled until she passed out. She also had a cloth put over her face while sparkling wine was poured over her mouth and face as she was raped.

The woman said she was “suffocating” and added: “He continued to pour the prosecco until the bottle was finished.”

Grant, of Henderson Street, Bridge of Allan, had denied the offences claiming that the sex was consensual.

A judge told Grant that by the time he committed the later offences he was an adult and fully responsible for his actions.

Lord Summers said his final victim was “a vulnerable young woman”.

The judge ordered that he should be kept under supervision for a further three-year period following his jail sentence.

Defence counsel Herbert Kerrigan KC said that Grant accepted that there was “absolutely no alternative” to a prison sentence following his conviction.

STV News is now on WhatsApp

Get all the latest news from around the country

Follow STV News
Follow STV News on WhatsApp

Scan the QR code on your mobile device for all the latest news from around the country

WhatsApp channel QR Code