Behind bars at last

KENNETH CROSSLEY

A SERIAL sex beast who raped a 10-year-old girl — then arranged for her to be violated by a complete stranger — has been jailed for 15 years.

Vile Kenneth Crossley (62), from Chadderton, used what a judge described as “skilled and ingenious” grooming techniques to win the girl over, then repeatedly sexually abused her over three years.

Pain
Sentencing him at Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court, Judge Adrian Smith told him: “You dominated her whole childhood and teenage years.

“She was infatuated by you and submitted to your behaviour because she came to love you.”

Crossley, of Linksway, was found guilty of rape, indecent assault and aiding and abetting an unknown man to rape her more than 25 years ago. The court was told that even when his relationship with the youngster ended, his behaviour did not stop.

And it emerged that Crossley was sentenced to six years in prison for sex offences against two girls aged between 10 and 14 in the mid to late 1990s.

The court heard that the new offences only came to light when the victim, now a grown woman, decided to make an official complaint against him.

Elizabeth Nichols, prosecuting, said Crossley — who had denied any wrong-doing — had first raped the girl when she was just 10, after engineering a situation in which he could be alone with her.

The court was told she had been confused and unaware of what was really happening to her. One thing she vividly remembered was pain.

Judge Smith said: “You made her feel special and as she got older you paid her increasing attention.

“From the age of 13 she engaged in regular sexual activity with you, became infatuated by you, and in her childish way, despite the fact that you were then in your 30s, saw you as her boyfriend.

“When she was 15, you took her to a country area, collecting another man on the way.

“She did not know him, and did not want to have intercourse with him, and you lay alongside while it happened. She described the incident as traumatic.

“Manipulation of this sort can cause long life psychological damage, and I can see that. Your behaviour has clearly affected this lady’s life.”

Judge Smith said it had been his duty to consider whether Crossley should be regarded as danger to the public and pass an indeterminate sentence.

He had concluded that he should not, given the age he would be on release from prison and the fact that he had not re-offended since undergoing offender-treatment programmes.

Crossley was jailed for 15 years for rape, eight years for aiding and abetting rape, and two years for indecent assault. The terms are concurrent.

He will be subject to sex-offender notification requirements for the rest of his life, and has been banned from working with children for life.