TWO OF SCOTLAND’S WORST EVER
A SERIAL rapist who attacked one of his victims with a 9ft-long boa constrictor was yesterday jailed for 14 years.
Evil John Dickson raped one partner up to 1000 times over five years.
He raped and abused another woman and tormented her with his pet snake called Mitch.
Dickson also subjected two more partners to horrific domestic abuse.
One victim was so terrified of getting another beating that police found her clutching a knife and cowering in a storage cupboard near the monster’s flat.
Dickson carried out his reign of terror over the four women between 2000 and 2017, mainly at addresses in Motherwell.
At the High Court in Glasgow, Judge Graeme Buchanan said the victims had suffered “degrading and humiliating” ordeals.
He told Dickson: “This was a course of criminal conduct of a quite extreme nature and you have shown no remorse whatsoever.”
The former labourer, from Wishaw, was found guilty of five charges, including rape and domestic abuse.
Dickson’s first victim was repeatedly raped during a five-year period.
She recalled weeping as Dickson forced himself on her.
The woman said: “I would say to him, ‘No, I don’t want to’.”
Prosecutor Duncan McPhie told jurors: “This all occurred on a number of occasions – three to four times a week between 2000 and 2005.”
Dickson also repeatedly raped his second victim and used the snake to torture her.
The traumatised woman said she was “terrified” when he threw the boa constrictor on her.
She added that the sex attacks happened so regularly – sometimes when she was asleep – that they ended up feeling “normal”.
Dickson raped her in the toilet of a train travelling to Edinburgh.
He carried out a similar attack at his sister’s house.
On another occasion, he pounced on her close to the River Clyde in Muirhouse, Lanarkshire.
Jurors heard she was often battered, spat on and verbally abused by Dickson, who called her a “slut” and other vile names. She recalled that during by MICHAEL PRINGLE michael.pringle@reachplc.com one attack, she was “punched from head to toe for over an hour”.
While the victim was dating Dickson, 38, he fathered a child with another woman.
Two other former partners were also victims of Dickson’s ferocious temper.
The one who hid in a cupboard had been attacked and feared more was to come.
McPhie said: “She told a policeman that he had assaulted her.
“She told him she had a knife in her hands because she was scared of Dickson.”
Dickson gave evidence at the trial.