A Johnshaven Paedophile pensioner, Christopher Maher, has been found guilty of a “pattern of sexual and violent abuse” against young girls in Dundee and Angus over a period of four decades.
Jurors were informed of how 73-year-old Christopher Maher exploited two young girls separated by generations.
He commenced the molestation of his initial victim in the 1980s when she was approximately seven years of age.
The sexual attacks grew so habitual that the victim, now an adult, found it difficult to remember individual occurrences while testifying during her assailant’s trial.
The Perth Sheriff Court was informed that Christopher Maher employed clothes pegs during his penetrative assaults, resulting in significant agony and enduring health issues, including bleeding, for his young victim that lasted for several days.
The court was informed that Maher also targeted a 14-year-old girl in 2022.
Subsequent to the sexual assault, he transmitted unsettling messages through social media, soliciting naked images.
Christopher Maher, from Johnshaven, now confronts incarceration and a stringent court mandate prohibiting him from approaching minors.
Following a lengthy two-week trial, a jury found Christopher Maher guilty on four out of the eight offences presented in the indictment.
Between October 1982 and January 1993, he repeatedly assaulted his first victim at several locations in Dundee.
The court was informed that he slapped and struck her, and in what prosecutors characterised as “one of her most significant life events,” he charged at her and seized her by her ponytail with such force that he pulled her off the ground.
The second complaint alleges that he engaged in “lewd, indecent, and libidinous practices” towards the same kid between October 1984 and October 1988.
Christopher Maher initially made contact with her private areas through her clothing, but his immoral behaviour progressed to grabbing and stroking her while she was unclothed.
His victim described the “thrusting, twisting” motion as he inserted clothes pegs into her back passage.
When she told him it was sore, he told her she “had to be brave”.
He told her sex was part of growing up, how he “needed to teach her” and how it would be their secret.
A social work report from 1988 recorded the child “denied that she had been molested,” but raised concerns her “bubbly extroverted personality faltered considerably” when her injuries were discussed.
Christopher Maher was found guilty of sexually assaulting a teenage girl at addresses in Arbroath over an eight-month period in 2022.
The court heard how he touched her thighs and buttocks and threw bits of paper down her top.
He messaged her on social media, asking if she knew what a “birthday suit” was.
“Like to see it,” he wrote.
“Would you do just top half?”
When the girl asked if he was joking, he replied: “No.”
When he was pulled up about the messages by another person, Christopher Maher said he was drunk and it was “just a silly, stupid joke”.
The jury found him guilty of sending written sexual communication to the child for his own sexual gratification or to cause her distress, humiliation or alarm.
Allegations he assaulted a male teenager in the mid-1990s – including an indecent assault in which he allegedly “inserted a hammer into his anus” – were found not proven.
Another allegation he assaulted a young girl in Johnshaven in 2022 was also not proven.
Prosecutor Joanne Ritchie said the evidence pointed to a “pattern of sexual and violent abuse”.
“It showed the accused has a perversive attraction to children, particularly female,” she told jurors.
“This sexual attraction of children is capable of escalating and developing into serious sexual abuse, which the Crown suggest it did in the case of the first complainer.
“All of this demonstrates a course of conduct systematically pursued by the accused to offend against children.”
After the jury returned its verdict, Ms Ritchie confirmed the crown was asking for a Sexual Harm Prevention Order which could ban Christopher Maher having any contact with under 18s, unless they are supervised by an adult.
He could also be prohibited from undertaking or applying for work or activities that would likely bring him into contact with children, without prior written permission.
At the close of the Crown case, defence counsel Gillian Simpson successfully won a no case to answer submission to have charge two – which detailed the historic lewd and libidinous behaviour – withdrawn.
Unusually, the trial was paused for three days while prosecutors appealed against the decision at the High Court and won.
Christopher Maher has previous convictions for domestic assault, the court heard.
Sheriff Alison McKay deferred sentence for background reports and allowed Christopher Maher’s bail to continue, even with 4 decades of child abuse and rape proven, but warned him he had reached the “threshold of custody”.
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