A MAN who raped two under-age girls after inviting them back to his flat and plying them with so much vodka that they were ‘paralytically drunk’ has been jailed for 16 years.
Mark Jackson, who also sexually assaulted a third girl on a later occasion, was ordered to register as a sex offender for life following his conviction.
Jackson (34) of Sandy Lane, Radford, Coventry, had denied raping a 14-year-old girl and a 15-year-old friend in April 2014.
But after deliberating over four days, a jury at Warwick Crown Court found him guilty of four charges by a majority of 10-2.
He was also convicted of assaulting another 15-year-old by penetration the following month and of sexual activity with her.
Prosecutor Peter Arnold said the two girls aged 14 and 15 first met Jackson near a shop in Sandy Lane where they asked him to buy vodka for them.
The older girl said she had told him she was 16 at that time.
After buying the drink, Jackson gave her his number and told them to get in touch if they needed more alcohol.
They contacted each-other a number of times before Good Friday when she and her friend, who told Jackson she was 15, made three visits to his flat, drinking vodka while he drank whisky.
On the last visit late that night she had crept out of her own home to go back there with her friend, and they had so much to drink she was sick.
Jackson forced them to take off their onesies and forced them to perform oral sex on him.
Jonathan Veasey-Pugh, defending, suggested Jackson had not forced them, but one replied: “When I tried to pull away, if I wasn’t being forced he’d let me – and he didn’t.”
At one stage, he locked their phones in his car so they could not use them.
The one girl returned to his flat on another occasion with two other friends, also aged 15, and after her friends had been drinking Jackson put his hand down one girl’s trousers and digitally penetrated her.
Jackson, who Mr Arnold said was aware the girls were all under 16, did the same again later against her will.
In May, an ambulance was called to one of the girls found drunk in a park– and at hospital she revealed what had happened.
Jackson said the first two girls had told him they were 16 and, asked whether he was attracted to them, he replied: “Well, I’m a single man. Why not? They looked young, but whether they were 16 or under, it’s hard to tell.
“At first they said they were 16, but it came out that [one of them] was 15, then that [the other girl] had been lying as well. I now know they’re 15.”
He denied kissing or touching them, and denied any sexual activity.
Mr Veasey-Pugh said Jackson, a father-of-three who had split up with his partner, had had a heroin addiction, and his offences since the rapes indicated a need to fund that.
Of the offences against the girls, he said they were ‘mercifully brief, and when told to desist, he did.’
Jailing Jackson, Judge Sylvia de Bertodano told him: “You jumped at the opportunity to provide alcohol to girls who were half your age and encouraged them to lie to their parents about their whereabouts.
“I have absolutely no doubt you did this with one motive in mind. You have a daughter of the same age these girls were at the time. You didn’t care about their wellbeing, you just wanted to have sex with them.”
