Stalker detained over sex attacks

Lyons admitted four charges of assault with intent to rape

A teenage stalker who carried out a series of attacks has become the youngest person in Scotland to be given a lifelong restriction order.

Thomas Lyons, 17, of Yoker, Glasgow, pleaded guilty to four charges of assault with intent to rape in the city between August and September last year.

At the High Court in Edinburgh, Lord Kinclaven ordered Lyons to be detained for at least four-and-a-half years.

The restriction order means he will be closely monitored on release.

The court heard how Lyons had just turned 16 when he followed a 27-year-old woman to her home in Glasgow on 7 August last year.

The victim was talking on a mobile phone when Lyons grabbed her neck, pushed her against a wall and kissed her.

He ran off when the woman began screaming and swinging her gym bag at him.

Just over two weeks later Lyons attacked a 16-year-old girl who he had followed to outside her home in the city's west end.

Pregnant victim

He was then confronted by a man who had been parking his car but managed to wriggle out of his t-shirt and flee, bare chested.

On 1 September Lyon's approached a 19-year-old woman, who was six-weeks pregnant, in the city centre.

When she tried to run off, he chased and confronted her, exposed himself and demanded sex.

Lyons ran off when two passers-by heard the woman's shouts of "get off me".

The court was told that just two hours after this attack, Lyons assaulted a 20-year-old woman in the Charing Cross area.

He again demanded sex but fled after the woman began screaming and hitting out at him.

Lyons was linked to the attacks by DNA evidence and identification parades.

At the High Court in Edinburgh, Lord Kinclaven ordered Lyons to serve a minimum of four-and-a-half years detention.

The judge said he would only be released when the parole board considered he was no longer a danger.