Sex offences man avoids prison term
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A MIDDLE-aged lorry driver has avoided a prison sentence for a range of sex offences and supplying alcohol and cannabis to teenagers over a four-year period.
Stephen Whitecross (44) committed the offences in three different homes in Inverness between 2008 and 2012.
Although he denied 10 charges, a jury at Inverness Sheriff Court previously found him guilty of eight, including three sex offences. The remaining five related to the supply of cannabis and alcohol.
Two other charges, one of indecently assaulting a 17-year-old and the other of breaching bail conditions were found not proven.
The offences involved five female teenagers and one male.
His youngest victim was aged 13 in April 2008 when he supplied her with alcohol in two city centre pubs before he behaved in a lewd and indecent way towards her at a flat in the Inverness area.
In June 2012, he plied two 16-year-olds with cannabis and alcohol before sexually assaulting one of them in a two bedroomed flat in Inverness.
The court heard he rubbed the girl’s leg and tried to put his hand down the front of her shorts.
On another occasion, he plied a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old with alcohol and cannabis and then indecently assaulted one of them.
Whitecross, who used to live in Inverness but now of Lossiemouth, was sentenced to three years' probation and 300 hours of community service at Inverness Sheriff Court today.
Sentencing him Sheriff Margaret Neilson said that the probation sentence meant he would be placed under extended supervision and that this would better serve the public interest than a short prison term, after which he would have been released without any ongoing supervision.
