Ex-teacher jailed for raping 12 year old

JAILED . . . Paul Waites

A SEX fiend who preyed on vulnerable young girls has been jailed for a total of eleven years after admitting offences including rape of an Oldham youngster more than a decade ago.

Manchester Crown Court was told 42-year old former teacher Paul Waites had deliberately targeted the girl, who was 12 at the time. The offences took place over several months in 2006 after he struck up a relationship with her on social networking site Teen Chat.

In June 2012 she made an official complaint to police and Waites was traced through a still-operative email address. The girl delayed asking for help because later that year she had suffered a sex attack by others that had pushed his actions to the back of her mind.

The court heard that around the time Waites assaulted her, he was also assaulting other underage girls. In March 2009 he was jailed for six years at Leeds Crown Court on 26 charges including possessing, making and distributing indecent images. He had been out of prison for only eight months when he was arrested again.

Judge Maurice Greene told him: “She was a vulnerable girl on the autistic spectrum and you deliberately isolated her and tried to turn her against her own family; made her trust you, and convinced her you were her only friend.”

Prosecutor Hugh McKee said Waites’ victim had said his actions had taken away her childhood before it had begun, and ruined her life. She had turned to drink, harmed herself and even tried to take her life at one point. She described the feeling of being a prisoner in her own mind, grew up afraid of men, suffered flashbacks and was still receiving counselling.

Waites had persuaded the-then 12 year old to meet him on an Oldham supermarket car park — the first of three meetings — after contacting her on Teen Chat.

Nothing happened at the first meeting, but on the second he touched her sexually and on the third he got her to touch him and perform oral sex. Waites, of Broad Lane, Bramley, Leeds had also asked her for sexually explicit pictures of herself.

Martin Taube defending, said Waites accepted all she had said.

Waites was jailed for 11 years for rape, four years concurrently for causing or inciting sexual activity with an underage child, three years concurrently for sexual assault, two years concurrently for sexual assault and 12 months concurrently for sexual grooming.