A man who indecently assaulted three people at a Scottish university while falsely claiming to be conducting radiation testing after the Chernobyl disaster has been jailed. John Beaumont has been jailed for four years and eight months, after he admitted indecently assaulting three students at the University of St Andrews during the 1980s. Advertisement Advertisement Sign up to the daily Crime UK newsletter.
All the latest crime news and trials from across the UK. Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. The 66-year-old will serve this sentence consecutively to a previous jail term he received from a court in Manchester in 2017, when he was convicted of similar offences.
Following the latest sentencing, Scotland’s Crown Office said Beaumont pretended to be a Ministry of Defence official who was tasked with gathering samples from people following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster. The explosion at the nuclear power plant in Ukraine, which at that point was part of the Soviet Union, led to heightened concerns about radiation poisoning. At the University of St Andrews, he produced false identification and consent forms as part of his ruse before subjecting two men and a woman to fake medical examinations.
After striking up a friendship with one man, Beaumont told him based off his medic.