A serial abuser who brutalised and raped multiple women in Fife has admitted having a makeshift weapon behind bars.
Philip Wight, 34, hid the lethal-looking 16cm-long piece of sharpened metal in a pillow case in his cell in Addiewell Prison’s C Wing.
It was found during a routine search of the sex offender’s single occupancy room on February 2 last year.
He was in prison for committing “brutal and terrifying attacks” and is on the Sex Offenders Register indefinitely.
He has been sentenced to a further year in prison.
Weapon excuse
Mair Graham, prosecuting, told Livingston Sheriff Court received a punishment of five days’ loss of privileges from the prison orderly.
Wight, from Fife, pled guilty on indictment to possessing an article which had a blade or was sharply pointed in prison.
James McMackin, defending, said his client was currently serving a 15-year extended sentence comprising a punishment period of eight years and six months, followed by a six-and-a-half year period of stringent supervision.
He said the accused’s earliest date of liberation was not until 2028 and he was realistic about not being granted parole before then.
He said: “He greatly regrets his conduct here.
“He was asked to look after this for another prisoner and he knows he shouldn’t have acceded to that.”
Mr McMackin admitted Wight had previous convictions for weapons offences for which he had been sentenced to prison terms.
Passing sentence, Sheriff Val Johnston highlighted Wight’s “appalling record” for violent crime, including a 21-month sentence in 2019 for assault to injury.
She told him: “The last time you had a knife in 2015 you got 20 months so you and weapons are a danger.”
Campaign of violence
Wight was jailed for eight and a half years on October 15 last year.
He was found guilty of attacking five women – raping two of them – in a campaign of violence that spanned 17 years.
His first victim was a teenager who he abused for four years.
He raped and attacked other women at addresses in Glenrothes, Kirkcaldy and Burntisland from 2009 to 2019.
One of the woman told his trial he pulled her face down a gravel wall.
Unemployed Wight was convicted of six assaults and four rapes after trial.
Fraser Gibson, Procurator Fiscal for High Court sexual offences, said Wight had inflicted “brutal and terrifying attacks” and praised the survivors’ bravery.
