Taxi Driver Online

Evening Times (Glasgow)

December 21, 2007 Friday

Jail for cab man after sex assault;

Driver gets four years after trying to rape passenger

A TAXI driver who tried to rape an unconscious woman as she lay in his cab has been jailed for four years.

Mark McNiven, 36, took off the drunk woman's trousers and underwear and sexually assaulted her in a driveway in Kilmarnock.

The private hire cab driver also tried to get a 13-year-old girl to expose herself in exchange for cigarettes and offered a third woman money if she let him touch her.

McNiven was found guilty of attempted rape on one woman and two breach of the peace charges towards two others after a trial at the High Court in Kilmarnock in October.

He appeared at the High Court in Edinburgh yesterday, where judge Lady Clark ordered he be kept under supervision for three years after he is released from prison.

"You have no insight into your behaviour and the distress it has caused others, " said the judge.

"I have no option but to impose a custodial sentence.

"You have taken advantage of female passengers whilst you were rendering a public service."

McNiven carried out the attempted rape in Kilmarnock on July 29 last year.

He tried to get the 13-year-old to expose herself between October 2005 and January 2006. He propositioned the third woman during a journey from Kilmarnock to Crosshouse between June 2004 and February 2005.

He has been placed on the sex offenders' register.

Defence counsel Lorenzo Alonzi said McNiven, of Crofthead Avenue, Kilmarnock, had been battling depression.

He spent the last two weeks in the psychiatric unit of Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock.
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IDFIMH

Licensing of drivers works then.

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Grandad,

Oh yes. But even caretakers can kill children.

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IDFIMH

He had passed all the checks as well.

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Grandad,

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Why don't you get a proper job???

Its a bit like putting a kid in a sweet shop when he got his badge he'd probably never done anything like that but for some the temptation is too great. I've seen it before and once the warning signs are there it is finding a way to get their badge taken off them ! Until they do something really bad which results in police involvement.