COUNTY NEWS: Three jailed for systematic sexual abuse of mother over four days

Three men have been jailed for '˜degrading and humiliating' sexual abuse of a woman while her four-year-old daughter slept on the other side of the wall.
Charlie Jones and James WilsonCharlie Jones and James Wilson
Charlie Jones and James Wilson

Father-of-three Joseph Noye, of Plaistow Road, Billingshurst, and two others were jailed for a total of 40 years at Guildford Crown Court today (Monday January 25).

He had been found guilty on one count of oral rape, one count of sexual assault and one count of criminal damage.

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Tayo Adebayo, defending Noye, appealed for a sentence that would offer ‘some hope for the future’ for the 27-year-old, who had overcome leukaemia as a child.

Joseph NoyeJoseph Noye
Joseph Noye

He was jailed for ten years.

The court heard that the vulnerable woman, aged in her 20s, was ‘passed around’ between the men inside her own home in Surrey during a four-day ordeal in October 2014.

The ordeal began when 28-year-old Charlie Jones, who did not know the woman, convinced her to let him into her home.

He forced her into carrying out sex acts and invited his friends, including Noye and 36-year-old James Wilson, to her home.

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In cells after his arrest, Jones said: “If I was to rape someone, it would be someone better than that.”

Following a 12-week trial, the three men were found guilty.

Three other men were acquitted of rape, while Ross Noye, also of Billingshurst, was cleared of rape and sexual assault charges but convicted of theft in December.

Jennifer Knight, prosecuting, said: “They were people who dominated her home because they were turning up whenever they wanted.

“They are all behaving as a group. She is passed from one to another of them.”

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She said there had been a ‘campaign of rape’ and further charges of assault occasioning actual bodily harm and criminal damage were ‘part and parcel of the pervasive atmosphere of violence’ during the ordeal.

In a victim impact statement, the woman revealed she had lost custody of her daughter and had to move away from her home into shared refuge housing.

She said: “Shortly after my first interview with police my daughter was taken into care.

“I felt my world was crashing down. She was the one thing stopping me from harming myself.

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“I often have images of Charlie standing at the bottom of the bed. I find them hard to cope with. It is thought I have post traumatic stress disorder and I find it difficult talking to men and find it hard to trust men now.

“To try and cope with what has happened to me I have tried to pretend it hasn’t. I feel that everyone knows what happened and feel they are all talking about it. It has made me paranoid.

“What has happened to me has turned my life upside down and I am now working to try and rebuild it.”

Ronald Jaffa, defending Jones, said while his client had been in prison he had learned to read and write and had taken a job as an orderly helping foreign nationals integrate.

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He had also started an initiative to get pastors from the travelling community church of Light and Life to visit the prison.

He had told his barrister: “I have a long time ahead of me. I want to try and turn a negative into a positive and want to use my time in prison to improve myself.”

Rachel Darby, defending Wilson, insisted the father-of-six was a church-going family man who carried out charitable work in his traveller community. However the court heard he also had convictions of theft dating to 2005.

Judge Noel Lucas QC said the assaults involved unusual sex acts, some ‘bordering on the perverted’, on a woman with ‘clear and obvious’ vulnerability.

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He said: “This was persistent sexual bullying of a very, very vulnerable woman.

“I found her to be an extremely vulnerable person who was lonely, lacked confidence, craved attention and was anxious to please.

“In short, a person who is easy to manipulate in order to bend her will to make her do things she does not want to do.

“Within a matter of minutes of being in her company, Charlie Jones will have seen her vulnerability, her loneliness, her desire to please and to be liked and the manner in which that could be exploited. Exploit her is precisely what Charlie Jones did.”

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Sentencing Jones to 20 years in prison for the most serious rape, with additional sentences to run concurrently which would have added up to a total of more than 75 years if run consecutively, Judge Lucas said none of the other men’s offences would have occurred without his involvement.

He added: “In the course of the early hours of October 26 the victim was subjected to an extended period of degrading and humiliating conduct.

“These offences are all part of a sustained process of sexual bullying and the range of offending shows a significant increase in the extreme nature of and depravity of your behaviour.”

Jones, 28, of Masons Bridge Road, Redhill was found guilty on five counts of rape, two counts of assault by penetration, two counts of sexual assault, one count of criminal damage and one count of assault (ABH). He was jailed for 20 years.

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Wilson, 36, of Kingston Road, Leatherhead was found guilty on two counts of oral rape, and was jailed for ten years.

In December, Ross Noye, 22, of Jengers Mead in Billingshurst, was jailed for ten months for theft and 16 months for breaching a suspended sentence.

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