Penpont

Police inspector is given 12 years
for raping two women

By Tara Womersley Published: 12:00AM BST 07 Jun 2001

A POLICE inspector who raped two women in their own homes was jailed yesterday for 12 years.

Adam Carruthers, 38, showed no emotion as he left the dock at the High Court in Edinburgh to start his sentence. Lord Dawson described his crimes, which he said involved violence, as "bestial and degrading", adding that Carruthers was a disgrace to the force he served.

The judge said that people should have been able to turn to Carruthers, of Dumfries and Galloway Police, for protection but instead he abused their trust, gaining entrance to his victims' homes and raping them. The long-term effects on the women were "too awful to contemplate".

Both were left in utter desperation and had tried to take their own lives. Lord Dawson added: "I cannot express the revulsion and contempt with which decent members of society regard you."

Carruthers, a father of two, of Penpont, near Dumfries, was promoted to inspector just before the allegations emerged in 1998. A court had earlier heard how he abused both of his victims with a police truncheon and frightened them into keeping quiet for more than two years.

One, known as Mrs X, 38, was the wife of a colleague and the other, Miss Y, 43, worked as a special constable. Carruthers had told them that they would not be believed because he was a police officer. The attacks ended only when Miss Y, 43, called a rape help line when contemplating suicide and was persuaded to report him.

Lord Dawson, sentencing, pointed out that Carruthers even attacked Mrs X, 38, as she lay on her sick bed after trying to commit suicide at a woodland near her home because of repeated abuse. A jury of eight men and seven women took two hours to convict Carruthers of rape and indecent assault after a five-day trial at the High Court in Glasgow last month.

He was also found guilty of threatening Miss Y in a telephone call during an internal police investigation into the allegation. The jury had heard that he started to assault her in June 1993 soon after she became friendly with him and his wife, and continued to sexually abuse her for more than three years before raping her in October 1996.

Langholm

Carruthers repeatedly indecently assaulted Mrs X between November 1993, when he went to her home in Langholm to investigate a complaint against her neighbours, and February 1995. Throughout his trial, which followed an investigation by Lothian and Borders Police, Carruthers denied all the allegations against him and insisted that the women had fabricated their stories.

In court yesterday, Ian Duguid, QC, defending, said Carruthers continued to deny the offences and had performed his duties as a police officer with distinction. Outside court, Det Supt Roger Orr, of Lothian and Borders Police, who led the investigation, paid tribute to the women who had come forward in the trial.

He also acknowledged the pain that the case had caused Mr Carruthers's wife, Margaret, 37, and sons, aged 12 and 15. He said: "The public are going to see it as very damaging to the service that an officer can be engaging in that conduct on duty. I would echo the judge's words that he was a disgrace to the uniform and the police service."