A convicted sex offender from Runcorn is awaiting a jury’s verdicts over allegations he raped three more separate victims.
Derek Coles, 49, of Lord Street, Runcorn, faces six counts of rape, one of indecent assault and one of an attempted serious sexual offence said to have take place in the 1980s and 1990s.
The jury has been sent out.
Judge Raj Shetty, summarising prosecutor Sion Ap Mihangell and defence counsel Michael Davies’s arguments yesterday said six of the charges related to alleged offences against a teenage girl aged under 16 years over a period of about two years.
The complainant said Coles, who denied all the allegations, had repeatedly ‘raped and battered’ her, using punches, slaps and headbutting.
She described the defendant as a ‘monster’ and branded one incident as ‘the most gutter, trailer trash’ act she experienced.
Chester Crown Court heard that the alleged victim, now in her 40s and who cannot be named for legal reasons, said she sought help from adults.
In one incident she said she visited ‘Halton police station’ while displaying bruises caused by the defendant, but was told officers ‘could not do anything’.
In another, she said the defendant dragged her to an alley, beat her and inflicted a bleeding nose when a patrol car pulled up.
She said the defendant told officer: “Don’t worry, I’m Mark Coles’s brother.”
The complainant said she left but Coles followed, dragged her into woodland and raped her.
Coles denied any such incident happened.
On another occasion a PE teacher noticed her bruises and ‘asked if she was pregnant’, the court heard.
When is was discovered she was pregnant, she said her father called her a ‘slut’ but he later apologised later in life.
The girl said she moved to a school outside Runcorn to avoid Coles but he would ‘follow her’ in a red Ford Escort.
A ‘kindly’ bus driver allowed her to lie on the vehicle floor to hide while he evaded Coles in the car behind.
Judge Shetty said Coles had denied having such a car and did not pass his driving test until years later, but then admitted to having had a red Ford Escort but said he only drove it while learning. Coles claimed he had sex with the girl on occasions but that she ‘always consented’.
He said he had been too naive to know about things such as the alleged indecent assault sex act and an attempted serious sexual assault.
The final two charges faced by Coles related to two other complainants, one who claimed Coles raped her in a living room in Runcorn after they left a pub on the ‘pretence’ of going to a party, and another who said Coles raped her in a bedroom after she was invited to a ‘karaoke event’.
The court heard Coles was convicted in the early 2000s of attempted indecent assault, two rapes and one count of false imprisonment over offences against two teenage victims one week apart. He had met one of the girls at a pub and offered ‘to give her a lift home’.
The judge warned the jury of nine men and three women that this did not entail guilt in the trial.
Proceeding.
Source: http://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/