Physiotherapist in jail following conviction for violent sex attacks

Aman who worked as a physiotherapist was locked up yesterday after his conviction for series of sex attacks on four women.

Derek Adams, 59, had committed crimes against women and children for decades.

Adams, of Bennachie Way, Dunfermline, in Fife, had denied a string of charges during a trial at the High Court in Edinburgh, but was convicted of 12 offences, including two rapes, an attempted rape and an indecent assault on women.

He was also convicted of physically assaulting four women and two children, including a two-year-old girl. And Adams was also convicted of threatening or abusive behaviour to one woman who was treated in a controlling way.

One woman told the court that after he raped her at an address in Fife he told her: “That makes us even.”

The 54-year-old said she had contacted him via an online dating site and he at first seemed “charismatic, friendly, educated and funny”. She said he was working as a private physiotherapist.

But the woman said he later became “very cold” towards her and began making derogatory remarks. She said: “He would constantly tell me I was useless.”

She said Adams told her she should just kill herself. The woman told the court: “Psychologically, I just seemed to diminish.”

She also told the court that during the rape attack by Adams he pinned her down on a bed, restricting her breathing. She said: “The worst thing was not being able to breathe.”

During the attack he threatened to sexually assault her and told her “because that’s what you deserve” then raped her.

She said that afterwards Adams acted “as though nothing had happened”.

The woman said that on other occasions Adams had threatened to break her legs and kill her.

She said: “He would grab me by the throat and while he was shouting abusive things he would be spitting in my face.”

Adams raped the woman in January 2011 and carried out assaults on her between January 2011 and February the following year.

The woman said that one time at a Tesco store in Dunfermline in 2011 Adams lost his temper with a crying little girl and slapped her leaving a hand print on her face.

Adams’s abusive offending began in 1985 in the Clarkston area of Glasgow when he raped one woman and attempted to rape another.

He carried out a sex attack on another woman at a house in Winchburgh, in West Lothian, in 1996.

Prosecutor Alan Cameron told jurors the evidence gave a clear picture of a “bullying and controlling man” who would force women into sexual activity.

Adams was on bail during his trial, but after conviction was remanded in custody by the trial judge Lady Carmichael.

Sentence was deferred on him until next month for the preparation of a background report.