All I can say is thank goodness that he is off the streets and let's just hope that everyone involved ensures that it stays that way!
SA 'pensioner sex beast' jailed in Britain
Karyn Maughan
March 31 2007 at 12:28PM
Former Johannesburg Children's Home employee James Frazer skipped the country four years ago to avoid prison for his repeated molestation of a mentally disabled child. Now, after being caught and convicted on multiple counts of child rape and indecent assault that he committed in the United Kingdom almost 25 years ago, he has been sentenced to 12 years in a notorious British jail.
British national Frazer, 71, had successfully avoided justice for half a decade, but a chance encounter in a Sunderland street proved to be his undoing. A woman he had raped during the 1980s, when she was a teenager, recognised him as her abuser and went to the police.
Her sister would later tell the police that she too had been molested by Frazer. Dubbed the "pensioner sex beast" by local media, one of Frazer's victims claimed he ensured her silence by threatening that she would be "taken away" if she told anyone about what happened.
Sentencing Frazer on Thursday, Newcastle Crown Court Judge Beatrice Bolton told him: "You were convicted in South Africa of similar offences. You clearly at that time were something of a sexual predator. These are serious offences of repeated rape, and although you were a younger man when you committed them, those girls have had to deal with the consequences for many years."
Frazer is expected to serve out his sentence in Frankland Prison, where serial-killer doctor Harold Shipman committed suicide. South African authorities, who put out an international warrant for Frazer's arrest in August last year, have confirmed that they will bring him back to serve his 12-year sentence here - if he survives his UK jail term.
The extradition process would kick into effect once Frazer had served his sentence in the UK. Frazer was arrested in South Africa in May 1996, after he had worked at the Johannesburg Children's Home for five years, and charged with four cases of indecent assault and one of rape laid against him by four girls, who were between 12 and 18 years old at the time of their alleged abuse.
Frazer denied any wrongdoing, but was convicted by the Johannesburg regional court of the rape and indecent assault of one of the complainants in December 2001. Sentencing Frazer to an effective 12 years in jail, magistrate Jerry van Vuuren said Frazer knew that his victim came from "horrendous home circumstances and regarded him as her father". "Yet he took advantage of her to satisfy his cravings," Van Vuuren said, adding that the victim must have felt helpless when she was "abused in the very place that she was sent to for protection".
Frazer lodged an intention to appeal against the conviction and was granted bail. In March 2003 his appeal bid failed and, in circumstances that have yet to be explained, he flew back to the UK a month later.
This article was originally published on page 5 of The Star on March 31, 2007
No comments:
Post a Comment