Former sailor found guilty of raping girl (14) in Stenhousemuir woods

Darren Bourn, 30, who previously sailed the world as a deckhand on yachts owned by the rich and powerful, met the 14-year-old girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, while she was chatting with friends in a park.

He walked her to woodland in Stenhousemuir, where he detained her against her will, and carried out the vile sex attack.

Nearby residents heard "blood-curdling screams” coming from the woods around midnight and called 999, while at the same time the girl's parents ran to the scene,

helped by the fact she had shared her location on her mobile phone with one of her friends.

They found her "sitting on the ground, crying and hysterical".

Bourn, from Cape Town, South Africa, who was living in nearby Larbert, was identified from CCTV and arrested the next day.

He was found guilty of the offence, which he committed on July 10, 2021, by majority verdict by a jury at the High Court in Stirling on Tuesday after a four-day trial. He

was also found guilty of communicating indecently with two women aged 71 and 59.

In a recorded interview that was played to jurors, the girl said Bourn had approached her and her group of friends in Crownest Park, also known as The Lido, in

Stenhousemuir and asked for cigarettes.

They made him do "star jumps” to “earn” one, and then the victim went with him to the garage to buy more. She said that, afterwards, he threatened that he would

phone the police on her and say she'd been drinking, then led her to the woods.

She said: "I tried to walk away. He kind of got hold of me. I was scared. I told him I wanted to go home. He kept hold of my arm and was walking really close to me, then

he shoved me down onto the dirt."

Weeping, she told police: "I said 'I know what you're doing, it's disgusting and I'm only 14'. I said 'no' so many times. I said to him, 'I know what you're doing,you're sick'."

She said she could hardly breath because of Bourn's weight on top of her, and she thought Bourn had not used a condom. Afterwards, he walked off further into the woods.

The girl said: "That's when I started screaming."Bourn came to Scotland from South Africa in January 2020 and worked as a boatbuilder on the Moray Firth and in Clydebank after formerly working as a deckhand in

the worldwide yachting industry. He was working at the time as a landscaper in the grounds of the nearby Forth Valley Royal Hospital.

He admitted having sexual contact with the girl, to which he claimed she had consented, but denied rape and said he'd been subject to "a false accusation".

He also claimed he thought the girl was 18.

Prosecutor Isabella Ennis KC said the girl must have been "terrified" and Bourn was "a liar".

Judge Norman McFadyen deferred sentence until March 10 at the High Court in Edinburgh and ordered that Bourn should continue to be remanded in custody. He also placed him on the sex offenders' register.