Justice Catches Up With Paedophile Rapist

A Merseyside rapist was sentenced to eight years imprisonment today for the historic sexual abuse of a girl he groomed from the 1970's.

Bar worker William Ashton, 54, of Breccia Gardens, St. Helens initially preyed on the girl when she was aged just six or seven years-old then resumed the abuse when she was sixteen or seventeen.

She was one of three women who came forward and made complaints about sex attacks between 1972 and 1985 and Ashton was acquitted of abusing the other two.

“This rape took place at the end of a lengthy period of grooming which started when she was six or seven years-old,” prosecutor Miss Caroline Carberry told Croydon Crown Court.

Ashton, denied, but was convicted by a jury of two sample counts of indecently assaulting the victim in Cantrill Farm, Liverpool between 1972 and 1974 then two counts of indecently assaulting her again and raping her at an address in Brunswick Road, Sutton, south-west London between 1982 and 1985.

Recorder Stuart Trimmer QC told Ashton, who was acquitted at Liverpool Crown Court last year of sexually assaulting a 17 year-old girl: “When she was aged six or seven for two years you regularly used her to masturbate you and gave her money and sweets as a reward.

“You used her for sexual gratification and you took advantage of her trust.”

Regarding the later abuse the recorder added: “You invited her masturbate you and she was a young teenager and because the same thing happened when she was a child you felt that entitled you to start again.

“You came into the bathroom and shut the door behind you which frightened her and you made her touch you. You took her to the bedroom and raped her.

“She was sixteen years-old, but you couldn't care less and you were angry with her because she had not had sex before.”

Ashton was found not guilty of indecently assaulting another girl, who said her breasts were repeatedly groped by the defendant, and she also claimed he forced his hands between her legs as they rode in a lift at a block of flats.

He was also cleared by the jury of four counts of indecent assault relating to the third complainant.

The rape victim told the trial Ashton was “angry” about the fact she had never had sex before, but proceeded anyway, leaving blood on the bed he took her to.

“He told me to lay down, to shut my eyes and it was over,” she told the court. “That was the last time.”

Before the rape she said Ashton “built up to it” by molesting her in a bathroom and putting his fingers inside her.

The defendant claimed the complaints were an “invention” and “false allegation” but each woman denied telling lies, stating it was very dificult to come forward after so many years.

Ashton was also ordered to sign the sex offenders register indefinitely.