A serial sex offender who crept into a sleeping woman’s home and stared at her from the end of her bed has been ordered by a court not to go near her.
Robert Basterfield was brought from prison to Forfar Sheriff Court to be sentenced after jurors convicted him of the creepy intrusion.
At a trial earlier this month, the court heard a woman dozing in her own bed in St Catherine’s Square, Perth, woke to find convicted sex pest Basterfield gazing at her from the foot of her bed.
Basterfield was given a backdated prison sentence, placed on the sex offenders register and furnished with a non-harassment order to protect his victim.
Found guilty
At a trial in January, jurors heard Basterfield’s victim was snoozing in bed with a man on May 28 2023 and opened her eyes to see him in her bedroom.
Giving evidence, she said: “He asked if he could come back later. I said ‘Get the f*** out my house.'”
High risk Basterfield conducted his trial without the aid of a lawyer.
The jury rejected his claim he was only in the property to clean it, as pre-arranged.
It took jurors only half an hour to convict him of threatening or abusive behaviour.
Protection order for victim
Basterfield was brought back to the Angus court to be sentenced after being assessed by social workers.
He was placed on the sex offenders register for a decade and jailed for a year, meaning he will be liberated to his new tenancy at Perth’s Crieff Road.
Sheriff Jillian-Martin Brown said: “I obtained a report to see if there was any supervision needed on your release for your support.
“It says in terms of supervision, you’re already in receipt of voluntary support.
“In light of that, what I’ll do is just impose custody and backdate it.
“The effect of that is you’ve already served a period on remand greater than six months.”
Sheriff Martin-Brown was asked to impose a non-harassment order protecting Basterfield’s victim.
She asked if he would be able to adhere to strict orders not to contact the woman or enter her home.
“That would be a piece of cake,” he told her.
The non-harassment order will remain in place for five years.
Growing criminal record
Basterfield, who hails from Perth, Australia, hit the headlines in 2007 as the first man in Britain to be banned from “accosting” lone women under a unique five-year prevention order.
Police branded him “highly dangerous” and claimed he was “capable of using extreme violence”.
But they lost a fight to have him banned from solo contact with the opposite sex for 30 years.
The former taxi driver was twice prosecuted for hounding females in Perthshire and was jailed in 2006 for stalking a rugby club barmaid.
In 2021, he was back in court for breaching the terms of a Sexual Offenders Prevention Order by sending hand-drawn images of male genitals to two women from his prison cell.
For more local court content visit our page or join us on Facebook.
