Inverness girls’ football coach found guilty of raping 15-year-old girl

A 53-year-old Inverness man who coached a local girl’s football team was today convicted of raping a girl under the age of 16 during a four-month period.

A jury returned a majority guilty verdict on Lee Murray after deliberating for just under two hours at the High Court in Inverness.

Sentence was deferred until September 10 at the High Court in Edinburgh for reports with Murray being remanded in custody and he was immediately placed on the Sex Offenders’ Register but for a period to be determined on sentencing.

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The girl’s father was in court to see Murray being taken back into custody in handcuffs.

When the trial opened last week, Murray denied the sex assault and rape charge and through his lawyer lodged a special defence that the girl had consented to all that happened during a relationship that lasted a little over four months.

Earlier during his directions to the jury, the judge Lord Sandison said if they believed the girl consented, then they could consider the alternative of Section 28 of the Sexual Offences Scotland Act, having sex with “an older child” aged 13-16.

Murray was convicted of on various occasions and locations between October 2021 and February 2022 including at Dores, in a layby in Essich Road and a location near Asda and elsewhere, assaulting a girl aged 15 by engaging in sexual behaviour, having sex with her and raping her in his car.

Murray, who was head coach and child protection officer of the now defunct Thistle Girls FC, was also found unanimously guilty of sending her messages of a sexual nature and also images of himself naked.

The girl, who cannot be identified, did not give evidence in court but instead the court was shown two video recordings of her being interviewed firstly by a police officer and social worker, and then when she gave evidence to a Commission Hearing and was questioned by Advocate Depute Adrian Stalker and Murray’s lawyer Mark Stewart KC. It was then that she said that what happened was with her consent.

Murray was also unanimously found guilty of a further two charges committed at an address in Kenneth Place, Inverness and elsewhere, where it was alleged that for his own “sexual gratification” or “humiliating, distressing or alarming” a person he believed to be a child aged between 13 and 16 but who was in fact an adult who was pretending to be the child, he sent her written sexual communication via social media and did therefore attempt to communicate indecently with a child contrary to Section 34 (1) of the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009.

The second charge contrary to the same Act was that he sent the same adult posing as a child a sexual image by engaging in a video call with the woman and caused her to see him performing a solo sexual act.

Advocate depute Adrian Stalker said this afternoon that Murray was on bail from Inverness Sheriff Court on the rape charge when he committed these further two offences.

Earlier in the trial, a 40-year-old volunteer told the court that she and Murray exchanged between 5000 and 6000 messages over a two-month period when she went onto a social media app and pretended to be a 14-year-old girl called Scarlet Speicher.

She agreed with Mr Stalker, that to begin with the online chats were about “fairly mundane” stuff such as what they were eating, TV, her dog and her mother but then they began to include messages in which Murray asked her about her sexual experience, including if she had ever touched herself, and did she have a boyfriend.

During the trial, the jury were also read text messages between Murray and the girl in which he expressed fear over what would happen to him if the relationship was discovered.

He said to her: “I am in jail, simples. Cause I know I go down if I get caught.”

Lord Sandison thanked the jury for their attention, and apologised for the fact that they had to hear some quite distressing evidence.