FUGITIVE RAPIST WHO COPS REFUSED TO NAME

BY MARK HOWARTH THE Daily Record can today finally unmask a sex beast who police refused to name when he was on the run.

Michael McMoran, whose crimes include raping a disabled teenager, was missing for three months.

Despite the beast being highly dangerous, Police Scotland refused to identify him while he was missing – so the public had no way of knowing if he was among them.

The Record can now reveal that before McMoran went on the run, officials had housed him yards away from a student accommodation block in Edinburgh, despite his sex offending past.

Police were so concerned he would strike again, they sought a court order to rein him in.

Yet when he disappeared from the capital last July – shortly after stealing a knife – court records suggest that it took several weeks for the authorities to even notice.

When they did, police refused to alert the public by naming him.

Drug addict McMoran, 38, who is one of Northern Ireland’s most notorious sex offenders, was finally apprehended by police in Belfast.

He is now back in jail and his identity can be revealed.

Last night, campaigners and politicians demanded action to make sure the public are alerted when dangerous sex offenders disappear.

Margaret-Ann Cummings, whose eight-year-old son Mark was killed by a convicted paedophile in Glasgow in 2004, said: “It’s outrageous that someone like McMoran can disappear off the radar for three months and the authorities keep it a secret.

“Anything could have happened in that time. It’s only by the grace of God no one was hurt or killed.”

In 1998, McMoran, a drug addict, was caged for 11 years for breaking into the home of a partially deaf 19-year-old and punching and raping her.

In October 2014, he was exposed by a Belfast newspaper for handing teenage boys suspicious wraps of paper.

He fled to Edinburgh and was in trouble within weeks. In January 2015, McMoran was charged with threatening behaviour against an ex-girlfriend at a Salvation Army hostel.

He was fined £200 but the penalty was cancelled when he failed to pay.

McMoran drifted in and out of council hostels around the capital. He broke into an H&M store on Princes Street and stole a cash register from a Royal Mile pub in 2015.

In May 2016, he stole items from two hotels.

Police tracked him down to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, where he resisted arrest and threatened officers. McMoran was sentenced to an 18-month drug treatment and testing order.

Back on the streets, he was soon on the prowl again, stealing from churches and a cafe. In October 2016,