Predator who raped boy and girl gets 8yrs

A rApist who preyed on children playing in woodland has been sentenced to eight years in prison.

paul MacKenzie, 21, left one of his victims, a 15-year-old girl, so badly injured she could have died, a court heard.

MacKenzie was 18 when he raped his first victim, a boy, also aged 15.

He was 20 by the time he raped the girl, whom he choked until she lost consciousness.

the High Court in stirling heard that MacKenzie seized the boy by the neck and injured him during the incident in a wooded area near the Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline in september 2019.

in March last year, he raped the girl in woods near Gilvenbank park, Glenrothes, putting his hand over her mouth and compressing her neck until she blacked out.

MacKenzie, of Dunfermline, Fife, appeared for sentence by video link from polmont Young Offenders’

institution, stirlingshire, where he has been on remand since being arrested in september last year.

He pleaded guilty to raping the boy to his injury, and raping and injuring the girl to the danger of her life. Judge Lord Armstrong told him he had used ‘serious violence’, in particular towards the girl.

Lord Armstrong said: ‘in the course of raping that young girl you used grave force, causing injuries to her mouth and neck consistent with manual strangulation.

‘You caused her to lose consciousness to the potential danger to her life. these crimes were both disturbing and grave.

‘society has an abhorrence of such conduct. it is important that those who might be disposed to such crimes against children understand they will receive significant custodial penalties.’

solicitor-advocate Gordon Martin, defending, said MacKenzie ‘accepted responsibility’ for what he had done.

He said MacKenzie had been through ‘considerable adverse experiences’ as a child, and had been taken into care when he was only five, adding: ‘He is not the maturest of individuals.’

in addition to receiving a jail term, MacKenzie was made subject to an extension of a further three years in the community, during which he can be recalled to prison if he re-offends.

He was placed on the sex offenders’ register for life.

‘These crimes were disturbing’