Wick Sheriff Court was told the lodge is in a remote location that is unable to be accessed by public transport.

Sheriff Neil Wilson’s judgement was published by the court and in it, he says Booth abused women and filmed the attacks.

Iain Livingston, the then chief constable of Police Scotland, raised a civil action at Wick Sheriff Court and Sheriff Wilson was asked to pass a trafficking and exploitation order under section 26 of the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Act 2015 for a period of five years.

Booth engaged in a ‘consistent course of conduct of recruiting women, both from the United Kingdom and abroad’ to ‘isolate them, either at Lochdhu Lodge… far from their homes, and thereafter submitting them to violent beatings and forcing them, through threats of violence, to perform sexual acts on him’ between 1998 and 2022.

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Lawyers for Police Scotland told the court that officers could not monitor Booth when he travelled outside the UK and the risk he posed to women could be minimised if he was banned from travelling.

Sheriff Wilson passed the order and it is the first time it has ever been granted in Scottish legal history, while Booth must also notify police 14 days before hiring any female employee.

He must also notify police of any female visitors and must surrender all his passports.

Sheriff Booth said Booth ‘takes pleasure in assaulting his victims’ before adding: “Given the evidence presented by the pursuer, I had no difficulty coming to the conclusion that the defender has, consistently over many years, been engaged in a course of conduct involving the targeting of financially vulnerable women whom he subsequently coerces into submitting to abuse, and in doing so committed acts of human trafficking and exploitation.

“I would go so far as to describe the evidence as overwhelming, and that the totality of the evidence presented by the pursuer, in the form of videos, Skype messages, documents and witness statements allows no other conclusion.

“The evidence of Mr Booth’s egregious conduct, as presented in court, was at times, utterly harrowing.

“The graphic video footage, combined with the context and background provided by supporting documentary evidence in various forms, was redolent of a level of cruelty and depravity which, whilst extreme, one can only hope is rare.”