Man jailed for nine years for three rapes and killing of unborn child

Police Scotland says he subjected women to ‘sustained physical, mental and emotional abuse’

Police are investigating the death of Brian Maley (Jane Barlow/PA) (PA Archive)

A man found guilty of raping three women and killing an unborn baby has been jailed for nine years.

William Rackstraw, 25, from Hawick, killed the baby one month before it was due to be born by kneeling on the mother’s stomach.

Rackstraw was sentenced to nine years in prison by Judge Lady Haldane at the High Court in Airdrie on Wednesday after a jury earlier found him guilty of five charges.

After sentencing, Police Scotland said he had subjected the women to “sustained physical, mental and emotional abuse”.

Det Con Kelly Bonnyman said: “What the women endured is unimaginable.

“All three women have shown tremendous courage in talking about their experience at the hands of this man.”

A jury at the High Court in Dundee last month found that Rackstraw’s action was responsible for the “placental abruption” which cut of the essential blood supply to the 35-week-old baby.

He claimed that the woman’s bruising was the result of her being “clumsy” and because she had fallen down.

The woman is now being supported by the charity Held in Our Hearts - an organisation providing baby loss counselling and support to bereaved families.

But the jury convicted him of the December 2020 attack as well as the rapes of three women.

The judge told Rackstraw at the time he had been convicted of a series of serious offences; verbal, physical and sexual abuse.

Lady Haldane placed him on the sex offenders register.