GRIM FIND

Child rapist who wrote sick book on abuse stories dies of severe heart attack in Edinburgh prison

A CHILD rapist who wrote a book based on his own campaign of abuse was killed by a severe heart attack behind bars, a sheriff has ruled.

Hugh Mitchell, 69, was caged for 10 years and 10 months in 2015 after admitting raping a nine-year-old girl.

The former classroom assistant wrote an account of sexual abuse mirroring his exploitation of a victim, which his wife handed in to police before he was due to stand trial.

The book contained a chapter entitled 'Holiday' which he wrote from a child's viewpoint describing a young girl's gratitude towards him for "teaching her how to make love".

A fatal accident inquiry at Edinburgh Sheriff Court heard that on March 20, 2019 he was three and a half years into his sentence at Saughton Prison when he collapsed on a stairwell after complaining of feeling unwell and sweaty at a presentation in the training room.

Prison medical staff found him "incontinent of faeces, cold, clammy and sweating profusely".

They called an ambulance which took him to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary where an angiogram showed very severe heart disease, with three of his coronary arteries being blocked.

Despite advanced cardiac catheter surgery to re-open his blood vessels, doctors found he had already suffered extensive heart muscle damage.

After repeated cardiac arrests a DNACPR (Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) order was put in place.

He suffered a further final, fatal cardiac arrest and died just before 8am the next day.

Sheriff Alistair Noble, who presided over the brief public probe, ruled: "Mr Mitchell's death was due to natural causes. No other findings are warranted on the evidence."

Mitchell, from Kirknewton, West Lothian, abused his victims between 1988 and 2004 at at Almondell Country Park, East Calder, and at Bubbles Leisure Pool in Livingston.

His trial heard how one woman he abused has scars on her arms from self-harming and suffers depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The victim was regularly subjected to abuse by Mitchell from the age of five.

Mitchell, a former classroom assistant at a West Lothian school who had acted as babysitter, later turned his attention to the woman's younger sister and abused her from the age of six.

Imposing the jail term, Judge John Beckett QC told him: "You deployed inducement, manipulation and threats to inflict your grossly depraved conduct on innocent children."

The judge said statements provided by the victims made "harrowing reading", adding: "In different ways you have traumatised all of your victims."

Police described Mitchell as "a dangerous predator".