A violent thug offered a sailing trip as “punishment” for his crimes has been jailed for nine months after a sheriff noted he had racked up seven assault convictions in less than five years.
Dale Burns, 21, attacked two men as he carried on a life of violence after being given the chance to go on a boating adventure trip backed by social workers.
Sheriff Gillian Wade found Burns guilty of both attacks and said: “You now have seven convictions for assault. The reports on you don’t make very good reading.”
Burns, High Street, Auchterarder, was found guilty of assaulting and injuring Ross Taylor and Connor Robson in Bute Drive, Perth, on May 3 this year.
Solicitor David Holmes, defending, told Perth Sheriff Court that Burns had picked up casual work as a landscape gardener and could offer compensation to his victims.
He said Burns who also has convictions for drink-driving and drug offences had been having a difficult time because his father had died unexpectedly recently.
“He is somebody who has had assistance. Much of his problem stems from the sudden death of his father at an age where he has found it difficult to cope,” Mr Holmes said.
Burns sparked a political row in 2012 when he was told to go on a Tall Ships adventure after repeatedly failing to carry out court orders.
It was revealed that Burns who spent two years flagrantly ignoring court sentences was being funded to go on a £500 cruise around Scotland’s coastline.
He carried out a brutal Buckfast-fuelled attack on a schoolboy in November 2010, and admitted breaching a supervised attendance order twice by not bothering to turn up for a meeting with social workers.
The court heard how teachers were too frightened to intervene as the drunken teenager, who was 17 at the time, booted the schoolboy in the playground.
Sheriff Gordon Fleetwood fined Burns £365 and ordered him to pay £150 in compensation to his victim, but he failed to pay that. He was given 30 hours’ work to do and when that failed it was increased to 60 hours.
However, he still did not do it and was lined up for the funded cruise around the isles instead. The trip was believed to be supported by City Base, an organisation backed by Perth and Kinross Council.
A council spokesman declined to discuss individuals but refused to deny that Burns had ultimately failed to turn up and take part in the trip.