Pensioner jailed for historic child rapes

27 Oct 2012, 12:19 pm   -   Source: AAP
An Australian man has been jailed for 11 years in the UK after being found guilty of child rapes. (AAP)

An Australian man has been jailed for 11 years in the UK after being found guilty of child rapes. (AAP)

An Australian man has been jailed for 11 years in London after being found guilty of sexually assaulting four young girls some six deacades ago.

An elderly Australian resident extradited to the UK and convicted of multiple counts of historic child sexual assault has been jailed for 11 years.

A London judge on Friday sentenced Reginald Davies, 78, after a three-week jury trial found him guilty of assaulting four young girls between 1949 and 1973.

"You left behind confused and damaged adults and children who grew up with the shadow of what you had done to them haunting them all their lives," Judge Susan Tapping said in sentencing.

She added that Davies' crimes were "utterly depraved".

Originally from Wales, pensioner Davies was extradited from Perth - where he had lived for some 25 years - in September 2011 after an application by British authorities.

The former serviceman was this week convicted of 13 offences: two charges of child rape, two charges of attempted rape, eight counts of indecent assault and one count of indecency with a child.

Davies abused his victims in south Wales when they were between nine and 16 years old, and he was aged 15 to 39.

He maintained his innocence throughout his trial at Kingston Crown Court on London's western outskirts, where he was seen to walk with the aid of a stick, and listened to evidence using a hearing loop.

"It is the prosecution's case that (Davies) nurtured a fear of disclosing the abuse in the complainants when they were children," prosecutor Hanna Llewellyn-Waters said at the outset of the trial.

"He made them feel that they would not be believed, that they were to blame and, on occasion, he threatened that they would be removed from their parents if they were to report his abuse of them."

Davies' four victims held hands and sobbed in the court as the sentence was read on Friday.

The court heard Davies was confronted by two of his victims in 2008 while they holidayed in Australia.

A third victim later came forward to police, who found the fourth woman after an investigation was launched.

Davies was arrested at his adopted home of Wanneroo.

"You are the one who must now face your day of reckoning. Maybe you thought you were safe from justice half way around the world, but you were not," Judge Tapping told Davies.

The allegations against Davies were "the oldest charges ever to be heard in a UK court", British police said.

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