Serial rapist jailed for 10 years after attacks on women in Inverness, Alness, Invergordon and Aberdeen
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A man who preyed on sleeping women during a string of sex attacks has been jailed for 10 years.
Antony Munro attacked one victim on a bus journey from Inverness to Bristol where she was due to give evidence in a court case
A judge told Munro (30) that his crimes revealed "a pattern of serious, opportunistic sexual offending" against victims, some of whom were vulnerable.
At the High Court in Edinburgh judge Lady Carmichael told Munro: "Your offending has had enduring consequences for the women you assaulted."
Munro, a prisoner in Grampian jail, was told he would be placed on the Sex Offenders' Register indefinitely.
He raped and assaulted women at houses, flats and a hotel in Inverness as well as in Invergordon, Alness and Aberdeen.
Of three women he raped two were asleep at the time they were attacked, as was one of two women subjected to sexual assaults short of rape.
Munro carried out his first attack in 2012 when he raped a woman in Invergordon while she slept, continuing even after she woke up.
He struck again in August 2017 when he repeatedly molested the same woman on the bus journey to Bristol and then raped her the following April after she fell asleep at a flat in Alness.
In June 2018 he sexually assaulted another woman in Inverness and on New Year's Day last year raped another victim at a hotel in the city.
In August last year he molested a woman at a flat in Aberdeen after being freed under two bail orders from Inverness Sheriff Court.
Munro had denied a string of offences but was found guilty of eight charges.
Defence counsel Keith Stewart QC said Munro, who is prescribed medication for depression, continued to deny responsibility for the offences.
In evidence the woman he attacked on the bus journey told how he knew medication she took made her drowsy.
She was trying to sleep when she became aware of Munro touching her.
She said: "I managed to doze off then I felt his hand going down below. I was nervous, embarrassed. I didn't know what was happening."
The court heard that she was also subjected to Munro's "wandering hands" on the return leg of the journey.
During the later rape attack she said she woke up to feel an internal "stabbing pain" and could smell cigarettes from Munro's breath on her face.
