Serial domestic abuser guilty of five-year reign of terror

Fraser Smith, 22, was convicted at the High Court in Glasgow on Tuesday of a catalogue of offences, committed between 2012 and 2017.

Smith now lives in Lochgilphead – but he has a string of previous convictions for offences committed in Helensburgh and the surrounding area dating back to 2013.

In addition to the offences for which he was convicted this week, Smith's criminal past includes the theft of a £1,000 watch from his mother in Helensburgh in September 2013, when he was aged 16.

He then went on to behave in a threatening or abusive manner the following year by seizing his father by the collar at their home in West Princes Street, threatening to hit him, and goading his father into assaulting him.

But despite being given what a sheriff described as a “final chance” to carry out a non-custodial punishment, Smith was again spared prison in 2016 after assaulting his then 16-year-old girlfriend by dragging her up the street towards a flat in Rosneath, where he was living at the time.

A hearing at Dumbarton Sheriff Court in November 2016 was told the victim of the attack had screamed “let go of me”, and had eventually managed to escape to a friend’s home nearby after being attacked.

Speaking after Smith was found guilty at the High Court this week, DI Ian Renfrew, from Police Scotland’s domestic abuse task force in the west of Scotland, said: “Smith was found guilty of a number of charges including rape and sexual and physical assaults.

“He carried out a campaign of violence on three of his partners over a period of five years which will have no doubt left them affected by the experience for the rest of their lives.

“I must thank these women for having the strength to come forward and report the years of abuse that they have endured and the courage they’ve shown throughout the investigation."

Smith will be sentenced at a later date.