Inverness hairdresser admits committing Christmas Day rape
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A BLACKMAILER who was jailed after posing as a young woman online to entrap men and a schoolboy was also found to have footage of him raping a man on his smart phone.
Joshua Hunter (24), a hairdresser, carried out the sexual assault on his victim after taking him home in the early hours of Christmas morning in 2015.
The victim had been drinking heavily in pubs in Inverness city centre on Christmas Eve when he came across a friend in the company of Hunter.
The young man later shared a taxi back to Hunter's then address in Oldtown Road, Inverness, although he has no memory of the event.
The High Court in Edinburgh heard the man recalled a naked male crotch being near his head but then passed out and later remembered getting dressed and looking for his mobile phone.
The man made his way home and his mother pointed out that his jumper was on back to front.
Advocate depute Derick Nelson said: "He spent the rest of Christmas Day in his room, worrying about what had happened the previous night."
On Boxing Day a group of women friends were out in Inverness socialising when one of them showed footage of Hunter having sex with the man to the others.
One of the woman sent the man a message asking what occurred between him and Hunter and he responded that nothing had happened and that they only shared a taxi. She then told him she had seen the sex video.
The man contacted Hunter and asked him to delete the video to which he responded "Huh". The victim then contacted police.
Hunter's home was subsequently searched by police who recovered his iphone. Footage was later recovered of the victim lying sleeping while Hunter carried out a sex act on him.
Hunter admitted assaulting and raping the man while he was intoxicated and asleep and incapable of giving or withholding consent, when he appeared in court today.
The judge, Lord Pentland, told Hunter that he had pleaded guilty to "a serious sexual offence" and called for a background report to be prepared, placing him on the sex offenders' register ahead of sentencing next month.
Lord Pentland said he had read remarks made by another judge, Lady Scott, when she sentenced Hunter to four years and four months imprisonment for a catalogue of crimes last year.
In this previous case Hunter posed as a woman and encouraged victims to take explicit pictures and videos and send them to him before then extorting cash from some of the men under threat of publishing the material on social media or distributing it to family and friends.
Hunter, formerly of Dunfermline, moved to Fife from Inverness. He gained more than £1700 from the calculating scheme and attempted to extort a further £4000 from one man during a crime spree spanning more than two years.
He began by targeting a boy in 2015, beginning when the victim was aged just 12.
When police seized phones, sim cards and a computer from Hunter's home in Inverness they also recovered indecent images of children.
In addition to the jail term in that case Hunter was also placed on the sex offenders' register for 10 years.
