Lt Col jailed for 8 years af ter raping 2 women he met on match.com
A former lieutenant colonel in the Territorial Army who raped two women he met on a dating site was yesterday jailed for eight years.
Philip Donegan, 50, from Knightswood, Glasgow, met his victims on match.com and stalked one of them after subjecting her to the sex assault.
The other victim said she eventually contacted police about Donegan after becom- ing distressed watching a rape scene in the film Braveheart. The High Court in Glasgow heard Donegan raped a 33-year-old in her Paisley home in 2016 and a 30-year-old woman at his home in 2017.
Donegan was also found guilty of a stalking campaign against the 33-year-old, bombarding her with unwanted texts, phone calls and threatening to send an indecent photograph of her to her boss. Prosecutor Sheena Fraser said: ‘Mr Donegan is a man who does not listen when he is told no.’
Donegan will be supervised in the community for a further four years after his release. Passing sentence yesterday, judge Norman Ritchie, QC, said Donegan presented a ‘high risk of further sexual offending’ and he went online ‘to get women for sex’. He added: ‘Your efforts there led you to these two women, who if not vulnerable had a degree of vulnerability about them.
‘I commend their courage in coming forward. It’s plain you are a man who does not take no for an answer.’
The 30-year-old woman said in evidence that she went to the police after watching Braveheart on DVD. She told the jury: ‘I was so upset I phoned my former husband and said, “I’ve been raped”.’
She told the prosecutor that initially the sex between them was consensual, but then she said it was painful and asked him to stop. Donegan stalked his other victim after she told him not to contact her again.
Once he left a bag at her door with a card and a lip balm that she had dropped in a supermarket. The woman said: ‘I went into meltdown.’
She told the jurors that while Donegan raped her she was ‘squirming’ and added: ‘I told him various times I didn’t like it and asked him to stop.’
As sentence was passed, Donegan, formerly a tax lecturer at Strathclyde University and a tax adviser with law firm Tods Murray, remained impassive in the dock.