Rapist threatened victim’s daughter at Stewarton house

Jul 11 2008

A RAPIST who threatened to do the same to his victim’s young daughter has been jailed for six years.

Craig Gallacher was previously found guilty at the High Court in Kilmarnock of carrying out the vicious attack in a house in Stewarton in February last year.

His 27-year-old victim told the court how she was raped while her six-year-old daughter watched television downstairs. At the High Court in Glasgow last week, Lord Malcolm said that Gallacher, 23, from Coatbridge had caused the traumatised woman “substantial damage”.

During the trial, she said that she had been struck in the face and had a hand placed over her mouth as she struggled to resist the attack.

She told the court that former bouncer Gallacher had first pushed her onto a bed and tried to kiss her.

“I kept saying no and telling him to get off,” she said. Gallacher then pinned her to the bed and pulled down her jeans and underwear before raping her.

At one stage she almost managed to wriggle free, but he grabbed her hair.

“He pulled me down and all I remember is his hand coming down and slapping me on the face,” she said.

And the jury heard that she did not dare scream because her daughter was downstairs.

It was as the attack came to an end that Gallacher made his chilling threat.

“He basically said to me before he got off me that, if I told anyone, he would do the same to my daughter,” said his victim.

After the rape the woman went to the bedroom window and shouted for a neighbour.

Gallacher left the house after saying: “What’s he going to do about it.”

The woman said: “I shouted abuse at him – something along the lines of ‘ya lying, rapist bastard’ – and threw shoes at him.”

A neighbour who came to her assistance said that he heard her shout something, to which Gallacher responded: “Shut the f*** up.”

And the woman told the neighbour: “He leathered me and raped me.”

Gallacher, who has previous convictions for driving offences and for breach of the peace aggravated by domestic abuse, claimed that the woman had not only consented to sex, but had instigated it.

He even alleged that she had deliberately lured him into sex so that she could accuse him of rape..

Gallacher was placed on the sex offenders’ register for an indefinite period.