A FORMER Army reservist has been jailed after raping three women in university halls or student flats linked to two Scottish universities.

Lewis Grant, a self-styled "sommelier, Champagne lover, and international man of mystery", targeted victims from southern Scotland to Stirling over a nine-year period, beginning when he "beckoned" his first victim, a child of 15, into bushes in a park in Dumfries in 2011 and had unlawful sex with her.

Grant, now 28, went on to commit his first rape, of a 19-year-old student, in her halls at Queen Margaret University, Musselburgh, before raping two more women while he was a student at the University of Stirling, training to be a teacher, completing a master's degree in management, and doing Army service in the university Officer Training Corps.

One of the rapes involved BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism and masochism) and two of the rape victims were throttled by Grant to the danger of their lives.

The former Musselburgh university student said that at one point, Grant had stayed for about a week in her room in halls at Queen Margaret University, sometimes asking her for sex four or five times a day.

She said that on one occasion, he had had sex with her despite the fact that it was clear it was hurting her a lot and she did not want to have sex with him then.

She described herself as "quite vanilla" at the time, and said that Grant had once brought up the subject of choking when having sex with somebody.

She said: "I shut that down immediately because that's a big fear of mine. I said: 'That's horrific, I'm not one of those people.'"

Waterboarded with Prosecco

Another of Grant's victims, then a 21-year-old student at Stirling, described being lifted off the floor by Grant, a martial arts enthusiast, who had his hands round her neck as her legs dangled and she choked.

Another of his rape victims, then aged 20, was beaten with a riding crop, waterboarded with Prosecco, burned with a blowtorch and choked until she thought she was going to die.

She contacted police in May 2020 with photos of her injuries. Police investigated to see if Grant had any former partners who might also have been raped or abused.

Grant was arrested a month later.

Giving evidence from behind a curtain at the High Court in Stirling, the whistleblower, now 24, said that she had she agreed to take part in "rougher sex" with Grant and went to his room in Stirling University accommodation in Bridge of Allan.

Grant began to hit her on the head with an open hand, then his fist, before pushing her off the bed onto the floor, pinning her hands above her head, covering her entire face with a cloth, and pouring sparkling wine very slowly and steadily over her mouth and face – while raping her at the same time.

'I wanted to say stop'

She said: "I was suffocating. The cloth was heavy on my face.

"I was in such a panic I didn't know what to do. I wanted to say stop.

"He continued to pour the Prosecco until the bottle was finished."

She said that Grant then took the cloth off and thrust his fist under her jaw.

She scrambled to the bathroom, where she found a tooth had chipped.

She said afterwards that Grant "made the whole thing seem so normal that, being younger and a bit naive, I thought maybe I'd got it wrong".

She claimed that on another occasion, in Grant's Stirling University bedroom, he had lit a kitchen blowtorch, telling her: "This might be fun to use when you're not behaving yourself."

Grant put out the flame but burned the bare skin of her back with the hot metal of the blowtorch, leaving a 20p-sized scar.

'In floods of tears'

She said that on a visit to her own flat, Grant had begun to whip her with a riding crop.

She said: "I was in floods of tears. I couldn't speak I was being hit so hard.

"He hit me so hard that the riding crop snapped in half. Then he hit me with the handle instead."

She said she decided to break up with Grant after he opened the door of her bathroom – where she had locked herself in – with a large kitchen knife.

At the end of a five-week trial, a jury of 14 deliberated for two days before finding Grant, of Bridge of Allan, guilty of raping the three women and assaulting two of them to the danger of their lives. He was also found guilty of having sex with the underage girl in Dumfries.

He was acquitted of raping two other women – the jury returning verdicts of not guilty and not proven.

Claimed it was consensual

Grant, who funded his studies at Stirling by working in a Bridge of Allan restaurant, had denied the offences, claiming all the sex and BDSM was consensual. He claimed that the assault of one of the woman whose life he endangered had not taken place in the way she described and had been self-defence.

He insisted he could not have performed some of the acts because a massive hernia had deviated his penis.

All of his victims were or had been in relationships with him.

When the verdicts were announced, Grant appeared impassive

Judge Lord Summers deferred sentence until October 26 at the High Court in Edinburgh. He remanded Grant in custody.

He said continuing his liberty would not be appropriate because he had been convicted "of a number of serious sexual offences and assaults".

Grant was also placed on the sex offenders' register.

Defence counsel Bert Kerrigan KC reserved mitigation.