October 2008

Serial sex attacker jailed for 21 years

VICTIMS wept as a depraved sex abuser was jailed today for a total of 21 years.

Some said the ten and half years that ex-miner Kingsley Vincent, 59, will – under present Government guidelines – actually serve behind bars, will not be enough for what a judge said had been one of the worst cases of its kind he has ever heard.

Last month, a jury found vile Vincent guilty of 20 sex offences against young girls including rapes, indecent assaults and causing a child to engage in sexual activity and to watch a sexual act.

The offences spanned decades and one girl had made a complaint to the police as long ago as 1989 about the man now said to have a ‘lust for young girls’.

But Vincent denied it at that time and with no other supporting evidence to produce to a court, it was decided not to prosecute him.

Judge Stephen Hopkins QC said today: “Had a different decision been taken then, others would have escaped that lust.”

He told Vincent, who worked at Nantgarw Colliery and lived in Cilfynydd before moving to an address at Cardiff Road, Merthyr Tydfil: “In my view you are an evil man with no conscience.

“I watched you carefully during your four-week trial. Your reaction has been consistent throughout and even now as I am speaking to you, is one of total indifference.

“When pictures of the young victims you had abused were being shown to the jury, you complained you couldn’t see them from the dock.

“You are incapable of recognising the damage you have caused.

“This is amongst the worst cases I have had to deal with in 30 years of practise.

“You took their innocence and destroyed their childhoods.”

Detective Sergeant Andy Whelan, of the child abuse investigation unit, told Media Wales outside the court: “Kingsley Vincent is one of the most dangerous offenders with which we have dealt.

“It was a massively complex case to investigate with its multiple offences spanning many years and has been extremely distressing for all concerned.

“And he is a man who has shown no remorse or compassion for his victims.”

Some of those victims had been forced to repeat their harrowing stories and to relive their ordeals, as adults, in the courtroom, after he decided to deny all their claims. They returned to Cardiff Crown Court to see him being led away to the cells.

Outside, moments later, they were in tears and too emotionally exhausted to be able to speak about the case.

But between themselves and to police officers they were questioning whether even 21 years – half to be spent behind bars and the remainder on licence – was long enough for such a serious sexual predator.

“It should be life,” said one.

Vincent had gone on trial denying 32 charges and was found guilty of 20.

He was cleared of one by the jury and of a further three on the direction of the judge.

The jurors were discharged in relation to eight further counts concerning the making of indecent computer images of children after failing to reach verdicts.

All 12 of them were told they would not have to serve on a jury again for at least 10 years.

They had not been aware that Vincent had convictions for indecently exposing himself twice in 1968 – once in a field during a carnival when he took off his trousers and lifted his shirt while waving at a woman.

Or that in 1978 he was before Pontypridd magistrates for entering the rear garden of a house at Cilfynydd and trying to steal a petticoat off the line before posting an indecent letter through the letter box.

Judge Hopkins who had previously called him a depraved predator, said those offences had given a hint of the deviant sexual personality now revealed.