Serial attacker's convictions against women were not passed to court by cops

A court sentencing a serial attacker wasn’t told by police of his 10-year criminal history of assaulting multiple women.

Incredibly, it fell to one of David Kerr’s victims to inform a prosecutor of his conviction history and pattern of assaults.

Until the victim’s intervention, the prosecutor on the case thought Kerr only had driving convictions when actually his crimes included strangling a woman until she passed out.

Police Scotland said the failure to tell the prosecutor of Kerr’s convictions was “human error”.

We have exposed how by moving between Scotland and Wales and changing his name, Kerr took advantage of omissions in tracking the criminal histories of serial domestic abusers.

We told how Kerr had brutally attacked three partners, the first Amy Clarke in 2012 and 2013 was in Wales when he broke into her home and strangled her until she passed out.

He beat Paula McNeill on a number of occasions in Mull and Paisley in 2018 and for the attacks on her and Amy, Kerr received only community payback orders and was put on an anger management course.

David Kerr has a long history of abusing women (Supplied)

After the attack on Mull, police were forced to apologise to Paula after it emerged island officers had asked her to collect Kerr from the cells. Kerr moved to Wales and beat up new partner Amanda so badly she was hospitalised. He received a prison sentence of 16 weeks and was charged with another attack but the case was dropped when Amanda was too terrified to testify.

Kerr appeared at Paisley Sheriff Court on March 12 and pled guilty to two breaches of a restriction on being in Paula’s vicinity.

It was only in a chance conversation with the Procurator Fiscal, that Paula realised she didn’t have Kerr’s full criminal history, which she then emailed to be passed to the sheriff.

Last night Paula said: “It is shocking and dangerous that huge parts of David’s terrible criminal background could be missing like that.”

Last Monday, Kerr was given two fines of only £150 for the breaches.

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