Rapist Scott Lannister carved initials into vulnerable victim who he forced to wear collar and act as dog

A man who raped two young people that he had forced to wear collars and tags has been jailed for 11 years.

Scott Lannister, 34, lured his “vulnerable” victims to his flat in Stirling between 2019 and 2020.

Lannister, who described himself as one of the Britain’s biggest “puppy masters”, attracted recruits from throughout the UK and sent them tickets to travel to Stirling to live with him as “house pets”.

They had to call him “master” and lived as dogs.

A young autistic person who completed his “pack registration form” online and moved up from England to be with him was beaten with a studded leather flogger called “The Scorpion” and slept in a dog bed in a cupboard while being forced to wear a neoprene mask as well as a padlocked collar and clip-on fuzzy tail.

They said they “initially felt happy and care-free living as a puppy”, but Lannister began to kick them with steel toe-capped boots, and repeatedly raped them, “as a form of punishment”.

Lannister was found guilty of three charges of rape and two of domestic abuse.

Judge Lord Scott gave Lannister a 20-year extended sentence with 11 behind bars and nine under supervision.

He said: “This was serious abuse of two vulnerable people over a period of one year.

“The female victim in her impact statement confirms the serious lasting consequences of your conduct…these can be serious and lifelong.

“You maintain your position from trial that what happened was with consent – the jury rejected that.

“It is necessary to impose this sentence to deter you and others from behaving this way as well as protect the public from you.”

Lannister was also put on the sex offenders register and given a non-harassment order against his victims for an indefinite period.

His victims’ injuries were so distressing that a man who saw their faces when delivering pizzas to Lannister’s “dirty, cluttered flat” called police immediately.

The court heard the victim, now 21, stopped living with him after ten months as his “house pet”.

They were soon replaced by another vulnerable, autistic victim, then aged 26, who moved from London to Lannister’s flat in Stirling.

Lannister paid for his ticket, met him at the train station, and immediately fitted him with a collar and tag.

Giving evidence via video link, he said: “I met him on an app called Telegram.

“He just offered and I had nothing better to do.”

He said Lannister “started off really nice” but then began being “very aggressive”.

He said Lannister forced him to wear a dog collar and a pup mask “pretty much 24/7”.

Lannister would grab him by the collar and force him to have sex with him without his consent.

On one occasion he had suffered an epileptic fit and woke up to find Lannister carrying out such an act.

On another, Lannister used a scalpel blade attached to a chopstick to carve AD – for “Amber Dragon”, a nickname – into his back.

The man said he had consented to the “obviously painful branding” because he was so scared.

Both victims said Lannister, described as “long term medically unemployed”, had made them turn over their benefit money to him.

He used some of it to take a “pup” on a trip to Latvia in 2020.

Police who searched Lannister’s flat recovered surgical blades, more than 20 dog collars and leads, three “floggers”, a wooden baton, metal chains, rubber dog masks, a large padded dog crate, dog beds, and dog tags.

Prosecutor John Keenan KC said Lannister “lured people to his house because he knew they were vulnerable, and then when he’d got them there, he abused and raped them”.

Lannister had denied the offences and claimed his victims were into BDSM and had consented.

Mr Keenan asked him: “You said you treated a ‘pup’ just like a real dog – that you loved them like you’d love a dog. Does that involve beating your dog?”

Lannister replied: “No, a dog can’t consent.”

Lannister had previously been jailed for four years at the High Court in Edinburgh in 2007, for sexual offences against children.

His defence counsel Bert Kerrigan KC told the sentencing: “He did not understand where the law stands on such things such as BDSM.

“There was undoubtedly an area of uncertainty where there is acceptance in the BDSM community.

“Becoming involved places them in the wrong side of the law at times.

“Mr Lannister sees himself as part of a subgroup in society who choose as part of this lifestyle to be part of this puppy play.”