Sex offender who raped two women and teen and abused young girl jailed for 13 and a half years

A sex offender who targeted children and women in attacks carried out for more than a decade has been jailed for 13 and a half years.

Darren Smith subjected two women and a teenager to rapes and abused a young girl between 2004 and 2020 at addresses in North Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire.

A judge told Smith, 43, that she read statements provided by victims who wrote movingly of the ways their lives were changed by his crimes.

Lady Hood told him at the High Court in Edinburgh that the nature and seriousness of the offences he was convicted of meant that the only appropriate way to deal with him was by a jail sentence.

The judge said: “You acknowledge yourself that a custodial sentence is inevitable.”

Lady Hood said Smith had shown no empathy with the victims of his crimes.

Smith, formerly of Irvine, had earlier denied a series of charges but was convicted of five crimes – four of rape and one of penetrative sexual assault on a child. The offences took place at addresses in Saltcoats, Stevenston and Irvine in Ayrshire and in Strathaven.

He carried out his first sex attack on a woman on an occasion between September 2004 and January 2005 when he raped her at a house in Saltcoats.

A second woman was subjected to repeated rape assaults by Smith between 2015 and 2017 after he attacked and raped a teenage girl in November 2007 in Stevenston.

Smith’s final crime was a sexual assault on a child who was under the age of five when he abused her on an occasion between February 2018 and February 2020.

Defence counsel Gareth Jones KC said: “This will be his first experience of custody.”

Advocate depute Alan Mackay told the court that three of the victims would welcome non harassment orders being made and submitted it was appropriate to grant them.

The judge granted the orders prohibiting Smith from contacting or attempting to contact them.

Smith was told he will be placed on the sex offenders’ register indefinitely following his sentencing.