March 2010

Police praise courage of victim aged 11 in speaking out against predatory paedophile Antonio Baraken

Updated: A rapist who forced his young victims to film him has been locked up indefinitely, thanks to the courage of an 11-year-old girl.

Antonio Domingo Baraken, 54, shouted insults and threatened a judge from the dock of York Crown Court after he was jailed for at least nine years, and possibly longer.

He was given a sentence for public protection, from which he will only be released if the Parole Board decides he is no longer a risk to young children. Baraken was jailed because his 11-year-old victim spoke out and gave evidence against him about how he raped her and sexually abused her nine-year-old friend after threatening them with a knife and making each girl film him abusing the other.

Speaking outside court, Detective Inspector Steve Smith, of York CID, said: “It is the courage of that girl (the 11-year-old) which has resulted in a very, very dangerous man being sent to prison.

“This is a man who is 54, and shows no regard for what he has done to others or the orders of the court. He showed his true colours at the end. It says all about him.”

Det Insp Smith praised the work of police, the Crown Prosecution Service, social workers, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the girls’ families and others who had worked on the case and are continuing to work with the two children.

He said they were now “doing as well as can be realistically be expected” in coping with what had happened to them and said he hoped they could “draw on those inner reserves they have displayed to positively move on with their lives”. Friends and relatives of the girls were in court to see Baraken jailed and some responded to his outburst by calling out. Baraken, of Leicester Way, Walmgate, had denied two charges of rape and one each of attempted rape and making a child watch a sexual act, but was convicted in December by a jury.

It was the latest in a career of sex attacks on children that began when he was 19.

Recorder Graham Hyland QC ordered that Baraken must serve a minimum of nine years before he can apply for parole; banned him from working with children for life; made a sexual offences prevention order – which will curtail his actions for the rest of his life if he is released – and put him on the sex offenders’ register, also for life.

Glenn Parsons, for Baraken, said the psychiatric report painted a “bleak picture” and his client may reconsider matters over time.