A blackmailer who was jailed after posing as an amorous young woman online to entrap men and a schoolboy was found to have footage of him raping a man on his phone.
Joshua Hunter, 24, carried out the sexual assault on his victim after taking him home in the early hours of Christmas morning in 2015.
The victim was drinking heavily in pubs in Inverness city centre on Christmas Eve when he came across a friend in the company of Hunter.
The victim, approximately the same age as Hunter, later left a bar and shared a taxi back to Hunter’s then address in Oldtown Road, Inverness, although the victim has no memory of the event.
The High Court in Edinburgh heard that the man recalled a naked male crotch being near his head but then passed out and later remembered getting dressed and looking for his mobile phone.
The man made his way home and his mother pointed out that his jumper was on back to front. Advocate depute Derick Nelson said: “He spent the rest of Christmas day in his room, worrying about what had happened the previous night.”
On Boxing day a group of women friends were out in Inverness socialising when one of them showed the others footage of Hunter having sexual activity with the man.
One of the woman sent the victim a message asking what occurred between him and Hunter and he responded that nothing had happened and that they only shared a taxi. She then told him about the sex video.
The man contacted Hunter and asked him to delete the video to which he responded “Huh”. The victim then contacted police.
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Hunter’s home was searched by officers who recovered his iphone. Footage was later recovered of the victim lying sleeping while Hunter carried out an oral sex act on him.
Hunter admitted assaulting and raping the man while he was intoxicated with alcohol and asleep and incapable of giving or withholding consent, when he appeared in court yesterday.
The judge, Lord Pentland, told Hunter that he had pled guilty to “a serious sexual offence”. He called for a background report to be prepared on Hunter and put him on the sex offenders’ register ahead of sentencing next month.
Lord Pentland said he had read remarks made by another judge, Lady Scott, when she sentenced Hunter to four years and four months imprisonment for a catalogue of crimes last year.
In the previous case Hunter encouraged victims to take explicit pictures and videos and send them to him using a false female profile before extorting cash from some of the men under threat of publishing the material on social media or distributing it to family and friends.
