Predatory sex attacker's 40 years of abuse

A PENSIONER who spent more than 40 years sexually abusing a series of girls and women has been branded a “predatory paedophile” by a judge.

Self-employed builder Derek Thomas abused females — some as young as six or seven — at locations across Swansea.

The 65-year-old, from Heol Bryngwili, Cross Hands, was jailed for eight years when he appeared at Swansea Crown Court, with His Honour Judge Paul Thomas saying his “sordid sexual attentions” had blighted the lives of his victims.

The court heard Thomas had abused the girls and women at various houses across Swansea, and at a workshop he used.

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He had previously pleaded guilty to 26 counts of sexual and indecent assault when he appeared at court yesterday for sentencing.

Ieaun Rees, prosecuting, said one of Thomas’s victims described the location where the attack took place as a “Hammer House of Horrors”, and said the assaults had had a lasting effect on her.

He said the victim had described how her marriage “had not been a success” because she hated her husband touching her, and “she looks back with sadness on her childhood — she said she wonders how many other lives he had ruined.”

Huw Rees, representing Thomas, said the only mitigation he could offer on behalf of his client was that he had admitted his guilt at the earliest opportunity. He added it had “taken justice some time” to catch up with him.

Thomas was sentenced to a total of eight years, put on the sex offenders register indefinitely, and banned from working with children.

Judge Thomas said: “You are now 65, and for two thirds of your life you presented to the world a picture of respectability that was a lie because the reality is you have been a predatory paedophile.”

The judge described him as a “committed paedophile” who had abused a series of women and girls “in a variety of disgusting ways” and left them emotionally scarred.

He added: “What you did has blighted each of their lives in differing ways in the past, in the present and, unfortunately in all likelihood, into the future.”

jason.evans@swwmedia.co.uk

01792 514605