A man dressed as a woman, who offered to give a schoolgirl a lift home, abducted his victim and held her hostage before subjecting her to a 27-hour-long sexual assault at his home, a Scottish court has heard.
Andrew Miller, a 53-year-old transgender butcher who also goes by the name Amy George, pleaded guilty to four charges of abduction, sexual assault, watching pornography in the presence of a child under the age of 13, and possessing 242 indecent images of children at Edinburgh High Court on Thursday.
The court heard how back in February Miller had seen the schoolgirl — whose age has not been revealed but was at primary school — walking home alone and approached her in his car. Dressed as a woman, he offered her a lift home, which she accepted, but he instead drove past his victim’s home and took her to his house in the Scottish Highlands.
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The prosecution then recounted how the girl, who was a stranger to her attacker, had been locked in Miller’s bedroom for over a day and was subjected to a series of sexual assaults.
The unnamed schoolgirl attempted to escape from Miller the following evening while her attacker was sleeping but found the front door to be locked. She instead called the police from a landline telephone and explained she had been sexually assaulted and was being held against her will.
She was rescued by authorities after more than 24 hours of being held hostage by Miller.
Miller told the court he had not abducted the girl, insisting that she was freezing and it was the “motherly” thing to do to offer to drive her home. He, however, did not have an explanation for why he drove to his own house, locked her in his bedroom, and assaulted her.
“I was trying to be nice. I put her in bed with me to warm up. I don’t know why I did it, it’s just one of these things,” Miller said via video link from HMP Edinburgh.
“There are a hundred things I should have done. I should have phoned the police. I didn’t even think of her age. I panicked and thought what the people would think about me having a child in my bed,” he told the court.
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A search of Miller’s home following his arrest unearthed a swathe of indecent images of children.
“Other sexually explicit material was recovered showing the user not only to have a predilection for children but also stockings and feet,” prosecutor Lorraine Glancy KC told the court.
“Searches recovered numerous items of female children and teenagers’ underwear,” she added.
The judge presiding over the case, Lord Arthurson, deferred sentencing in order to obtain reports on whether or not Miller meets the criteria for an order of lifelong restriction — an indeterminate sentence that sees the convict subjected to indefinite imprisonment and supervision by electronic monitoring for the rest of their lives.
Miller was consequently remanded in custody and is due to appear next before the High Court on Aug. 15.
