December 2012

Former Nuneaton man jailed for child sex offences has sentence increased

A FORMER Nuneaton man who was jailed for child sex offences has had his “unduly lenient” prison sentence increased by top judges.

Christopher Wilson, 72, formerly of Stockingford, was convicted of rape and 22 counts of indecent assault at the crown court in Leamington during October and jailed for eight years.

While living in Nuneaton, Wilson committed a catalogue of “gross sexual abuse” against three girls, who were aged from just six to 14.

Three judges at London’s Court of Appeal upheld arguments by the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve QC, that the eight-year term was not tough enough – and increased it to 11 years.

Lord Justice Pitchford said Wilson, who owned a garage, subjected one victim to three indecent assaults and raped her when she was aged 11.

The attacks had profoundly affected his victims, said the judge, who added: “One said she considered her young life had been taken away by Wilson. She has experienced difficulties with intimate reltionships ever since.”

Wilson, who last lived in Dumfries, Scotland, denied accusations made in 2001, but they resurfaced in 2011 when the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children passed details of allegations to the authorities, the appeal judge added.

Lawyers representing Mr Grieve argued the sex attacks were “premeditated and predatory” and the eight-year sentence was nowhere near enough to mark the gravity of Wilson’s crimes.

Lord Justice Pitchford, sitting with Mr Justice Kenneth Parker and Judge Francis Gilbert QC, said: “It seems to us that, whether the judge was sentencing in the 1980s or the 2000s, these offences represented gross sexual abuse.

“The offender did not commit further offences after 1980, but he managed to avoid prosecution in 2001 and did not alleviate the stress of his victims when confronted finally in 2011.

“The sentence did not, we think, reflect the seriousness and the multiplicity of the offences committed over a very substantial period of time.”

Upping the sentence by three years, he concluded: “In our view the appropriate total sentence was 11 years imprisonment. We shall therefore quash the sentence of eight years and shall substitute a sentence of 11 years imprisonment.”

October 2012

Pervert pensioner jailed for sexual abusing young girls

A POLICE appeal for former employees of a Dunchurch haulage firm to come forward helped to break the story given by a pervert who had sexually abused a young girl there.

And at Warwick Crown Court pensioner Christopher Wilson was jailed for eight years for sexually abusing three young girls while he was living in Nuneaton in the 1970s.

During his trial the court heard that he had abused one of his victims at the Arthur Applins Transport premises in Dunchurch, and later raped a girl at his own garage in Tamworth.

Wilson, 72, of Wycliffe Way, Nuneaton, at the time, had denied a total of 21 charges of indecent assault and one of rape – but was found guilty of all 22 offences.

Jailing Wilson, who has recently been living at Auldgirth in Dumfries, Scotland, the judge, who also ordered him to register as a sex offender for life, said he had taken his victims’ childhoods away.

Prosecutor Rebecca Wade had told the jury that during the 70s Wilson had carried out a series of serious sexual assaults on three young girls.

“Those assaults largely remained a secret until last year when they came to the attention of the authorities when one of the women contacted the NSPCC, which led to a police investigation.”

Miss Wade pointed out that the charges were not the total of Wilson’s abuse of the girls, but were ‘merely a sample’ of the offences he had committed against them.

In the early 70’s Wilson was working as a mechanic at Arthur Applins Transport which was based just off the A45 at Dunchurch at the time, but now no longer exists.

On one occasion, possibly at a weekend when he was working alone, he took a ten-year-old girl there with him.

When she finally went to the police that victim described how she had been taken upstairs, where there was wooden furniture, and forced to commit sexual acts.

When he was finally arrested and questioned last year Wilson denied the incident ever took place, claiming the building was single storey and there was no upstairs.

Another girl said Wilson had sexually abused her in the sleeping compartment of one of the lorries at Applins.

Again, Wilson denied that had taken place, claiming the lorries had no sleeping compartments.

But after the police appealed, without revealing the reason, for former employees of Applins to contact them, Edgar Duckett, who had worked there as an HGV driver and was in a relationship with Arthur Applin’s daughter, came forward.

And he revealed that a second floor had been created in the single-storey unit by installing a false ceiling – and that there had been wooden furniture upstairs.

The police also spoke to other former employees and established that at least one lorry cab had a sleeping unit.

Miss Wade said after leaving Applins, Wilson had set up his own business, the ‘Dug-out Garage’ in Tamworth where in the mid-70’s he raped an 11-year-old girl in his office.

After the jury had found Wilson guilty of all 22 charges by a majority of 11 to one, Wilson’s barrister Kristina Montgomery conceded: “The sentence which will follow is inevitably one of a substantial term of imprisonment.”