Victim speaks out after sexual predator photographer convicted

Simon Scott targeted five women between 2014 and 2017

A victim of a predatory photographer has spoken out after he was convicted of a string of sexual assaults.

Simon Scott, known as Sid, targeted five women aged between 17 and 20, between 2014 and 2017 in Aberdeen and Glasgow.

One woman who was assaulted in 2014 said her initial "anger and sadness" had returned when other victims came forward.

Scott, 44, was released on bail and will be sentenced on 1 September.

A jury took almost six hours to convict him following a trial at Aberdeen Sheriff Court.

He was convicted of five charges of sexual assault committed between 2014 and 2017.

A jury returned not proven verdicts on six charges of sexual assault and a charge of indecent assault.

Simon Scott was convicted by a jury at Aberdeen Sheriff Court

One of his victims told BBC Scotland News that she felt justice had now been done.

She said: "I was coming forward for all the other women too, because of what happened to us. It wasn't right, we should be believed.

"We were all young, it's something that's stayed with all of us, and he needed to be brought to justice."

The woman was sexually assaulted by Scott in 2014, when she was 19.

She said: "It was meant to be a outdoor photoshoot, but when I got there, he took me to a studio.

"We shot many photos in one outfit and he then pressurised me to change into another outfit we discussed that I'd not committed to wearing.

"When I was in the second outfit, he sexually assaulted me.

"Coming forward as a sexual assault victim, it isn't easy, it is hard. It makes you go back there many, many times over, it's a long process.

"But it has been worth it as justice has now been done."

'Intelligent, articulate women'

The trial was told Scott had more than 100,000 followers on Instagram and worked with professional modelling agencies in Scotland and London.

He was arrested in 2020, after a post appeared on social media calling for any women who had experiences with him they thought to be criminal to report it to police.

During their investigation, cybercrime officers sifted through several million images from Scott's storage devices.

Around 150,000 photographs were deemed to contain overt eroticism or nudity.

During the trial, Scott said his life had been destroyed, he had lost his business overnight, and described the allegations as a "co-ordinated and calculated attack on my character".

Defence advocate David Taylor suggested the women's recollections had become distorted over time.

He told the jury: "What you are seeing is a tale that is growing in the telling."

But prosecutor Lynne MacVicar told the jury this was not a group of women who were "out to try to get him".

She said they were intelligent, articulate women who were not fantasists.

The jury heard Scott was a "predator who used his photography as a ruse to legitimise his sexual offending."