Attack ordeal of girls abused by Ferris sidekick

GANGSTER’S FORMER PAL FACES PRISON

Tim Bugler A former right-hand man of gangster Paul Ferris is facing jail for abusing young girls.

Har ry Young ran Premier Security Services (Scotland), which was wound up in the 90s with massive VAT debts.

Ferris claimed he was hired as an “independent security adviser” of the firm, which went bust owing more than £300,000 in unpaid taxes.

Convicted gunrunner Ferris was also closely linked to Frontline Security – where Young worked as an employee after being banned from being a director.

At Stirling Sheriff Court, after a four- day trial, jurors took just 20 minutes to find Young, now 67, guilty of using lewd and libidinous practices towards the girls, then aged between five and eight, at addresses in Larbert, Stirlingshire, between 2004 and 2006.

For legal reasons, the sisters, now aged 17 and 19, cannot be identified.

The younger victim, giving evidence by CCTV link, recalled that Young had come into her bedroom when she was five or six and picked up her Barbie doll. He removed the doll ’s top, exposing its plastic breasts, then put them in his mouth and began to lick them.

Then he put his hands down the young girl’s shorts.

Her sister said that when she was aged six to eight, Young, who had come in drunk from a Celtic game, fell downstairs and banged his head before asking for a cuddle on the sofa. There he put a cover over her and sexual ly touched her underneath it.

The court heard that the girls’ mother, now a 38-year- old carer, had been a friend of Young and frequently shared a bed with him.

However, the court heard, the relationship was not sexual.

The mum told prosecutor Sarah Lumsden that this was because “Harry had issues”.

She said that during a holiday to Salou, Spain, when the girls were young, Young had accused her of having an 1999 for assault to severe injury and permanent disfigurement, for which he was jailed for six years.

He was released halfway through his sentence but was arrested over an alleged firearm offence and sent back to jail.

Young was once a close associate of Ferris and was the official face of Premier Security Services (Scotland) Ltd, who crashed in 1997 over their tax bill.

He then helped to form a new firm with a similar name, Premier Contract Security (Scotland), which collapsed when Ferris was jailed for gunrunning in 1998.