A CONVICTED blackmailer was jailed for four years today after subjecting an unconscious man to a degrading rape ordeal.

Joshua Hunter, 24, a hairdresser formerly of Dunfermline, who posed as an amorous young woman online to entrap men and a schoolboy, was found to have footage of him raping the victim on his smart phone.

He carried out the sexual assault on his victim after taking him home in the early hours of Christmas morning in 2015.

Hunter admitted assaulting and raping the man while he was intoxicated with alcohol and asleep and incapable of giving or withholding consent.

The High Court in Edinburgh heard that the victim had been drinking heavily in pubs in Inverness when he came across a friend in the company of Hunter.

A judge told Hunter: "At the time of the offence your victim, whom you had befriended the previous evening, was asleep and intoxicated."

Lord Pentland said that Hunter must have been aware that the man was unconscious and incapable of consenting.

He added that the crime had "devastating and lasting effects" on the victim.

Lord Pentland also ordered that Hunter should be kept under supervision and monitored for a further two year period.

The court heard that the 24-year-old shared a taxi to Hunter's then address in Inverness, although the victim had no memory of this.

The man recalled a naked male crotch being near his head but then passed out and later remembered getting dressed and looking for his mobile phone.

He made his way home and his mother pointed out that his jumper was on back to front.

Advocate depute Derick Nelson said: "He spent the rest of Christmas day in his room, worrying about what had happened the previous night."

On Boxing day, footage of Hunter having sexual activity with the man was seen by a woman who contacted the victim and asked what had happened between him and Hunter.

He replied that nothing had happened and that they only shared a taxi. She then told him she had seen the video.

When the man contacted Hunter and asked him to delete the video, he responded "Huh". The victim then called the police.

Hunter's home was searched and footage on his phone showed the victim lying sleeping while Hunter carried out a sex act on him.

Defence solicitor advocate Ewen Roy said that on the evening before the rape Hunter was out socialising with women friends and was "extremely drunk".

He later told a female friend that he had a sexual encounter and she pestered him to share the video with her.

Mr Roy said Hunter eventually sent it to her with a message not to share it or talk about it with anyone. He said Hunter was remorseful for his actions.

Hunter was jailed in a separate case for four years and four months for a catalogue of crimes last year.

In the previous case, details of which were prohibited from publication until now, he encouraged victims to take explicit pictures and videos and send them to a fake female profile that he set up online.

He then blackmailed and extorted money from some of the men under threat of publishing the material on social media or distributing it to family and friends.

Hunter, who had moved to Dunfermline from Inverness, gained more than £1,700 from the scheme and attempted to extort a further £4,000 from one man during a crime spree spanning more than two years.

He began by targeting a 12-year-old boy in 2015, pretended to be a female and induced the child to perform sex acts on himself, record them and send them to him.

Hunter then went on to look for men as online targets.

When police seized phones, sim cards and a computer from his former home in Inverness they also recovered indecent images of children.

Hunter had admitted a total of 13 charges when he appeared in court. He pleaded guilty to nine charges of extortion, offences of causing an underage child to participate in sexual activity and possessing and making indecent images of children. The offences were committed in Inverness-shire, Inverness, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Lanarkshire between January 1 in 2015 and May 1 2017.

The court heard that Hunter's criminal conduct had a profound effect on one victim.

The man was "terrified" that material he had sent would be revealed to his family and contemplated suicide. Another victim handed over £500, fearing that images of him in a nude state would be sent to his employers.

Lady Scott said: "You requested or persuaded your victims to engage in sexual acts likely to be viewed as degrading and you did this because those images were likely to result in payment to to prevent publication."