Rhyl,North Wales - Man jailed for historical sex offences

Published date: 26 November 2015 | 

Published by: Staff reporter
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TO THE outside world Raymond Jones was a respectable man, a pillar of his local community in Rhyl.

But shamed Jones had a secret past and now he has been jailed for 11 years.

It turned out that Jones, now aged 63 and from Parc Esmor in Rhyl, had indecently assaulted a child when he himself was a teenager.

Then, when he was still a young man, he sexually assaulted two young girls and tried to rape one of them.

Mold Crown Court heard that he had led an entirely blameless life for the last 35 years or so and many held him in high regard.

But the judge, Miss Recorder Gaynor Lloyd, said that his past had now caught up with him.

In addition to the 11 year jail term, he was ordered to register with the police as a sex offender for life.

A Sexual Harm Prevention Order was also made under which he is not to have any unsupervised contact with children.

He is also banned from ever again approaching his victims, who were said to be still suffering the trauma inflicted upon them.

Jones denied 18 charges of sexual assault on three victims and one charge of attempted rape but was convicted at an earlier hearing.

The court heard that he did not accept the convictions.

His barrister Mark Connor said it was a key point in mitigation that for the last 35 years or so he had led a totally blameless life.

Many people had good things to say about him and there was no suggestion that he had acted inappropriately during that time.

The judge said that it was a difficult sentencing exercise.

The earliest offences dated back to the 1960s and 1970s when the defendant was himself a teenager.

The victim had struggled to come to terms with it and was still embarrassed and traumatised some 50 years later.

Then he went on as a young man to abuse two other victims after grooming and manipulating them.

They had been deeply affected and no doubt it would continue to blight the rest of their lives, she said.

It seemed that in the mid 80s he became a different person, people spoke highly of him as a generous and kind man, and many genuinely held him in high regard and could not reconcile the brutal youth with the man he later became.

The defendant had shown no remorse, he accused his three victims of lying but the judge said that it was he who had been exposed as telling a pack of lies.

“You have taken no responsibility for your actions,” she said.

She took into account that he had been a man of good character for more than 30 years and had managed to lead a productive life.

The impact of imprisonment would be considerable on himself and on his family, who supported him, she said.

There were shouts of “injustice” from the public gallery as he was led away to the cells.