Sick con carried out sex act in front of warder
A NOTORIOUS sex offender performed an indecent act in front of a shocked female guard at Addiewell prison as he sat on a bed in his cell.
Gary Travers left the woman “embarrassed and disgusted” with his lewd behaviour, a court heard.
Travers, 46, was found guilty yesterday of performing a sex act while staring at the guard in his cell at HMP Addiewell.
The guard had been working at the jail for four months at the time of the incident in August 25, 2019.
She told Airdrie Sheriff Court that cell doors had been open for breakfast and she was at her desk working on emails when she noticed Travers staring at her “in an offputting manner”.
The officer, now 22, said: “It was continuous and I asked him to stop. So did a male colleague. But once I was on my own again he continued staring.
“He was sitting on the top bunk in his cell with his back against the wall.
“He put his hand down his jogging bottoms and touched his genitals while looking directly at me.”
Travers got on his knees and pushed his trousers down before carrying out his indecent act.
The warder added: “It went on for about a minute. He kept smiling.”
The guard said she and a male colleague confronted Travers who acted “like nothing had happened”.
She said it made her feel “very uncomfortable, embarrassed and disgusting. It was quite intimidating as well.”
It was put to her that she couldn’t have seen such an action from her desk.
But the guard insisted: “It was pretty clear what he was doing. I was only about three metres from his cell and the door was ajar.”
Travers denied any wrongdoing but a jury found him guilty by majority.
Travers was also convicted of carrying out a sex act in front of a teenage girl in Moodiesburn, Lanarkshire, on April 25 last year.
Sheriff David Young jailed him for 26 months and placed him on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years.
Travers has a string of convictions for sexual offences dating back to 1996. They include committing an indecent act outside a woman’s house after cutting wires on her security lights.
Travers was jailed for two years in 2017 for breaching the terms of a sex offenders’ prevention order.
A clinical psychologist called him “a persistent, high-risk sex offender”.