A paedophile motorsports business owner from Angus showered parents with money and gifts to get access to their children.
Colin Bandeen, who worked in the oil industry in the Far East before setting up the motorcycle business, “corrupted the innocence” of children as young as eight in Kirriemuir and in a neighbouring town.
His crimes spanned 20 years, starting in 2001, as he sexually abused four children, behaved indecently towards a fifth and sixth and tried to worm his way into the confidence of the parents of five more.
Bandeen, 63, got access to several of his victims through a contact involved in the Church of Scotland.
Bandeen, of Forfar, stood trial at the High Court in Stirling and was found guilty this week.
The court was told he supplied a poverty-stricken single dad with food and alcohol and abused two boys from the ages of eight and nine, climbing naked into a sleeping bag with them and interfering with them after the lone parent went to bed the worse for drink.
He took the boys to “Jeep Fests” in England three times, abusing them in hotel rooms.
Court told of years of abuse
The children first met Bandeen on a camping trip to Loch Lomond, on which the family had gone with a man their father knew through the Church.
The abuse continued until the older one was 14 and the younger one for longer, until he was 16.
Bandeen bought motorcycle leathers for their younger sister when she was 11 or 12 — getting her to change into them, bra-less, in front of him.
He got her to rub cream on his back and tried unsuccessfully to coerce her and her male schoolfriend to have sex with each other when they were only 13, while he waited in another room to be told they had done it.
That incident happened at Bandeen’s elderly parents’ home in Forfar, while they were away.
The girl, now 28, giving evidence behind a screen, said: “I was terrified.
“I curled up in Mr Bandeen’s mother’s bed and cried myself to sleep.”
The boy fooled Bandeen by leaving an unused condom in the toilet.
Bandeen eventually bought one of the boys and his younger sister one-way tickets to Malaysia, where he had a home, “coercing” their father into letting them to fly out “for a holiday”.
Police and social workers stepped in the day before they were to go.
Abused from Malaysia
Bandeen continued to sexually abuse the girl’s schoolfriend, exploiting his interest in 4x4s and motorbikes, taking him on shopping trips and buying him expensive clothes and motorcycle gear.
He opened a bank account for him and paid in £300 a month and plied him with alcohol.
When he was still 13, Bandeen emailed him from China and Malaysia with porn film clips and sexual photos.
He raped him at the age of 14 and indecently assaulted him while giving him “driving lessons” at 15.
The boy contacted police years later and said he had not revealed the abuse before because he was “embarrassed and ashamed”.
Now 29, he revealed he had had therapy because of Bandeen.
Victim left ‘raging’
The girl said Bandeen’s exploitation of her family had left her “raging”.
She recalled in evidence how when she was young, he used to visit her home and take her family to Asda to buy them food and sweets and get alcohol for himself and her father.
Their living room table would be spread “with a buffet”.
She said: “We used to call it Friday night – party night.”
But while her father “got blotto”, Bandeen would “just sip”.
When her father went to bed, Bandeen would roll out his double sleeping bag on the floor, strip naked, and encourage the girl’s two brothers to climb in naked beside him, saying “we’re all boys together”.
The girl said of Bandeen: “He saw a father who was struggling and thought, ‘Oh, I could take advantage of him’.”
Knockhill trip
After returning to Scotland full time in 2017 and setting up a motorcycle business in Kirriemuir – Bandeen Motorsport – the predator, who also owned flats, targeted the parents of other young children.
He would turn up at their homes, promising work, handing out money and offering to buy games consoles.
He offered to buy a young father a motorbike and to “sponsor” young boys’ sports activities.
He pestered parents for photographs of their children, them on an outing to Knockhill Racing Circuit in Fife and boasted of “helping children in Malaysia”.
Police were called in after people he was targeting became “uneasy”, “concerned” and “alarmed”.
Manipulative abuser
Prosecutor David Logan said: “Bandeen ingratiated himself with families of young children by generous gifts, invited himself into their houses and their lives, taking them on trips and holidays, all with the intention of using and abusing children for his own sexual gratification.
“These were horrible and traumatic events for these children, that had a huge impact on their lives.
“He showered money and gifts to try and get families and children to trust him.
“The desire to have children under his control was a constant theme, to manipulate and persuade them to get involved in things they should not have been anywhere near at their age.
“He made persistent attempts to get unsupervised access to boys.
“There was very much a theme of corruption of innocence – the corruption of innocent young children.”
Guilty
After the four-day trial , a jury found Bandeen guilty of six charges of sexual assaulting or abusing three boys and indecently assaulting one of them by raping him at the age of 14.
He was also found guilty of three charges of using lewd and libidinous behaviour towards the girl and boy and two charges of stalking the parents of five children in Angus and Fife.
Another charge of stalking was found not proven, and he was found not guilty of committing a statutory breach of the peace in an alleged incident in which he was said to have offered to take a three-old-boy to the toilet at a charity motorbike meet.
Bandeen, who denied all the charges, sat completely emotionless, his arms folded, as the verdicts, all by majority, were announced.
Paul Nelson KC, defending, said Bandeen faced “years” jail.
Judge Lord Cubie remanded him in custody for reports, to be sentenced at the High Court in Kilmarnock on August 16.
The Kirriemuir business shut in July 2023.
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