November 2020

Former Queen’s guard at Balmoral jailed for raping girls

A former soldier who was part of the Queen’s guard at Balmoral Castle has been jailed for nine years for sexual abuse against children.

John Paul Hoy repeatedly molested and raped two girls and indecently assaulted a third victim in his home in Edinburgh between 1986 and 1996.

Judge Lady Scott said the 46-year-old had “dominated and terrified” his victims.

Jailing him at High Court in Edinburgh, she said Hoy had blighted their lives.

Lady Scott said: “These offences constitute a very serious and persistent course of sexual abuse of children.”

“You blighted their lives and caused significant and obvious damage, especially to the second victim who spoke of her childhood being taken from her.”

“The damage to her was all too evident in her evidence, as indeed was her bravery.”

The judge told Hoy, who was assessed as posing a high risk of sexual harm: “The scale of the abuse to the first and second victims is extraordinarily serious.”

Lady Scott said that in sentencing Hoy she took into account he was also a child when a large part of the offending occurred.

She also noted that Hoy had lengthy Army service which had left him struggling with the effects of post traumatic stress disorder.

Hoy was 12 when he began committing sex crimes in 1986 against a nine-year-old girl with the abuse escalating into repeated rapes.

His second victim was aged seven when he began preying on her in 1988 and she too became the target for repeated rapes.

A third girl was indecently assaulted by him at a house in Edinburgh on two occasions when she was aged between nine and 13.

Hoy had denied the 11 charges of rape, indecent conduct and indecent assault. He was found guilty following a trial.

He was acquitted of a further rape charge against a girl aged 14 or 15 allegedly committed at another address in Edinburgh between 2004 and 2006.

At his trial he lodged a special defence of alibi which stated that for two periods in 2004 he was stationed with the Army in Aberdeenshire at Balmoral, the Queen’s residence in Scotland.

He told the court: “We were part of the Queen’s royal guard at Balmoral so it was pomp and circumstance, but also with guard duties.”

His first victim told jurors at his trial that she was subjected to repeated abuse. She said: “I was a little girl. I was scared. I was living in terror some days.”

His second victim told the court: “I didn’t have a childhood. My childhood was taken away from.”

Hoy was placed on the sex offender’s register indefinitely.

October 2020

Vile Scots soldier used game of ‘hide and seek’ to abuse young girls

A vile sex beast who carried out a 16 year campaign of horrific sexual abuse against vulnerable young children is now behind bars.

Former soldier John Hoy, who was part of the Queen’s guard at Balmoral, repeatedly raped two girls and indecently assaulted a third during his vile crime spree in Edinburgh.

The beast was a teen when he began committing sex offences against younger children and used a game of hide and seek to attack one girl.

The 46-year-old lodged a special defence of alibi covering part of his offending period and claimed that he was stationed at Balmoral with the Army at the time.

He told his trial at the High Court in Edinburgh: “We were part of the Queen’s Royal guard at Balmoral so it was pomp and circumstance, but also with guard duties.”

Hoy’s first victim was aged nine when he began molesting her in 1986 and she went on to suffer years of abuse, continuing after he joined the Army in 1992.

The victim told the court that she was regularly sexually assaulted and raped and added: “I was a little girl. I was scared. I was living in terror some days.”

She said that on occasions the attacker told her: “Shh. It will be quick.”

Another woman who was abused by Hoy from the age of seven in 1988 told the court: “I didn’t have a childhood. My childhood was taken away from me.”

She said that on one occasion Hoy abused her in an agonising way that left her bleeding. She said: “It felt like red hot pain.” 

She said she was begging him to stop.

The woman said she also suffered excruciating pain during abuse he perpetrated and told the court: “I got told to shut up. I was crying.”

A third victim was indecently assaulted by him over a four year period beginning in January 1989 when she was nine. The abuse started during a game of hide and seek.

Hoy had denied the child abuse and said that being accused of it made him “physically sick”.

He said: “Nobody in this room or in that room (the jury housed at a cinema) knows what it is like to be accused of these allegations. It completely destroys a person.

“It is not just me it destroys, it is other people.”

Hoy, of Edinburgh, had denied a string of charges during a trial but was today found guilty of a total of 11 offences – four offences of rape, two of indecent assault and five of indecent conduct.

He was acquitted of a further rape charge against a girl aged 14 or 15 allegedly committed at a house in Edinburgh between June 2004 and June 2006.

After Hoy was found guilty of the offences the trial judge, Lady Scott, told him: “You have been convicted of a number of offences of a very serious course of conduct involving sexual abuse and rape of children.”

She remanded Hoy, who had been on bail since November 2018, in custody ahead of sentencing next month.

Lady Scott told jurors: “You have been involved in a particularly difficult and serious case, involving a large number of charges relating to historical sexual abuse. These are harrowing cases to try.”

Hoy was put on the sex offenders’ register.