A Stirling sadist who raped two young people he had forced to wear collars and tags was this week jailed for 11 years.
Scott Lannister, also known as Scott Hanlon, lured his “vulnerable” victims to his flat in the city between 2019 and 2020.
Lannister, 35, who described himself as one of the Britain’s biggest “puppy masters”, sent them tickets to travel to Stirling to live with him as “house pets” where they had to call him “master” and lived as dogs.
A young autistic person who completed his “pack registration form” online and moved up from England to be with him was beaten with a studded leather flogger called “The Scorpion”, slept in a dog bed in a cupboard and was forced to wear a neoprene puppy mask and a padlocked collar for “walks”.
They said they “initially felt happy and care-free living as a puppy”, but Lannister began to kick them with steel toe-capped boots, and repeatedly raped them, “as a form of punishment”.
Lannister was found guilty of three charges of rape and two of domestic abuse.
On Wednesday, Judge Lord Scott gave Lannister a 20-year extended sentence with 11 behind bars and nine under supervision.
He said: “This was serious abuse of two vulnerable people over a period of one year. The female victim in her impact statement confirms the serious lasting consequences of your conduct...these can be serious and lifelong. You maintain your position from trial that what happened was with consent – the jury rejected that.
“It is necessary to impose this sentence to deter you and others from behaving this way as well as protect the public from you.”
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Lannister was also put on the sex offenders register and given a non-harassment order against his victims for an indefinite period.
The court heard a victim, now 21, stopped living with Lannister after 10 months as his “house pet” but was soon replaced by another vulnerable, autistic victim, then aged 26, who moved from London to Lannister’s flat in Stirling.
Lannister paid for his ticket, met him at the train station, and immediately fitted him with a collar and tag. Giving evidence via videolink, he said: “I met him on an app. He just offered and I had nothing better to do.” He said Lannister “started off really nice” but began being “very aggressive” and forced him to wear a dog collar and a pup mask “pretty much 24/7”. Lannister would grab him by the collar and force him to have sex with him without his consent. On one occasion he had suffered an epileptic fit and woke up to find Lannister carrying out such an act.
He said Lannister had whipped him with a leather flail and hit him with a cane about three times a week and on another occasion Lannister used a scalpel blade attached to a chopstick to carve AD – for nickname Amber Dragon – into his back.
Prosecutor John Keenan KC said Lannister “lured people to his house because he knew they were vulnerable” then abused and raped them.
Lannister had denied the offences and claimed his victims were into BDSM and had consented.
Lannister had previously been jailed for four years at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2007, for sexual offences against children.
Defence counsel Bert Kerrigan KC told the sentencing: “He did not understand where the law stands on such things such as BDSM. There was undoubtedly an area of uncertainty where there is acceptance in the BDSM community.”
Police and prosecutors this week urged victims of similar offences to come forward regardless of passage of time.
DI Forbes Wilson of Forth Valley Public Protection Unit, said these were “degrading, violent attacks”, adding: “Sexual crimes, of any nature, will not be tolerated. We will investigate it thoroughly and you will be fully supported by officers and our partner agencies.”
National Procurator Fiscal for High Court Sexual Offences, Fraser Gibson said: “He manipulated vulnerable people – much younger than himself – for his own depraved ends. The victims endured appalling ordeals while being controlled and manipulated. It has taken great bravery on their part to speak out against him and report the crimes. We hope today’s sentence offers them some degree of comfort as they attempt to move on in their lives.”
