iStockA sex attacker with more than 100 convictions was caught trying to rape a woman in the street.
Stephen Stewart, 59, was spotted on top of the victim by a passer-by as she headed to work in Glasgow city centre early on October 10, 2023.
She immediately dialled 999 – officers soon arrived to find the younger woman still on the ground and Stewart sitting next to her.
He later lied: “It is my pal’s bird – she asked me to sleep with her.”
Stewart has now been jailed for four years after he admitted to an attempted rape charge.
It emerged at the hearing at the High Court in Glasgow that he already had 115 previous convictions stretching back to the early 1980s when he was a teenager. None were for sexual offences.
Stewart had also been freed early from another prison term when he struck.
Prosecutor David McDonald told how the woman had got chatting to Stewart and two other men as she looked for directions.
She had never met any of them before.
Stewart and the woman later briefly went to where he was staying at the time before heading towards a pub.
They eventually ended up at the Clyde Walkway area. Both took drink and drugs.
The court heard the woman’s next memory was being back where she lived the next afternoon.
But, that morning, Stewart had taken advantage of the intoxicated victim.
A passing cyclist at the Clyde Walkway had wrongly believed there was “some kind of consensual sexual activity” happening.
Mr McDonald said: “The woman remained lying on the ground and the witness noted no movement or response from her.”
A few minutes later, another woman walked past and spotted Stewart with his trousers down.
She thought he was “attempting to have sex” with the victim “while she was unconscious” and “lifeless”.
Police arrived and they got the woman up into a seated position, but she remained “unstable”.
During the probe into the sex attack, she later told officers: “I would not have gone near him with a barge pole.”
Billy Lavelle, defending, said Stewart had little memory of the incident, but accepted he had done what he had pleaded guilty to.
Lord Colbeck cut the jail-term from four and a half years due to the plea.
Stewart will also be supervised for a further three years on his release.
The judge: “You have received numerous custodial sentences before and were released early from the last of those when you committed this crime.
“This was opportunistic having been committed against a woman you had only met the previous day.”
Stewart was also put on the sex offenders list indefinitely.
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