Wayne Baker - 22 sex offences involving young girls.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/8491371.stm

A "sex-obsessed" businessman has been jailed for 11 years after admitting 22 sex offences involving young girls.

Wayne Baker, 61, of Ebbw Vale, Blaenau Gwent, lured girls as young as 14 into prostitution, meeting some via the internet, Newport Crown Court was told.

Baker was described by police as a predator, and some of the girls were duped by the promise of work as models.

Judge David Morris said Baker was obsessed with sex and had a compulsion to dominate and control young girls.

He told Baker: "It is plain your purposes were two-fold - mainly to provide a supply of young girls to indulge in a number of sex acts with you to satisfy your own lust.

"Then prostitute them for money you would receive a commission from."

Last month Baker admitted charges involving child prostitution and child pornography, keeping a brothel, assault causing actual bodily harm, supplying a controlled drug to another and making and taking indecent photographs of a child.

The case is to a significant extent about the exploitation of highly vulnerable and impressionable girls and young women

Elwen Evans QC, prosecuting
He will have to be supervised on his release from jail for a further four years and has been placed on the sex offenders' register for life.

Gwent Police had said it was one of the worst cases of its kind in the area and praised the victims who gave evidence.

The court heard that he lied about his age in teenage internet chatrooms.

Elwen Evans QC, prosecuting, said: "The case is to a significant extent about the exploitation of highly vulnerable and impressionable girls and young women."

She said Baker had "quasi-legitimate" businesses, including one called Mayfair Models.

But his interest in girls also led him to make contact with them through the internet, she added.

"He went into under-18 websites, he went into under-18 chatrooms and he used social networking sites," she said.

"For these sorts of activities it was inevitable that he would lie about his age."

He was able to "subvert" an internet filter placed on a computer by the mother of one of his victims.

'Sex was his life'

Miss Evans said he advertised the availability of photo-shoots online, attracting girls who were interested in modelling careers.

"What then seems to have happened in several instances was the defendant would push and push as far as he could with the girls to see if he could draw them further into his web of sexual activity," she added.

He ran a brothel from his home where men paid to attend sex parties on the last Friday of every month, the court heard.

Customers paid £120 an hour for sex with the prostitutes Baker controlled. In one year his escort operation turned over an estimated £80,000.

He also advertised himself as someone who could provide services, Miss Evans said. One witness said "sex was his life".

Many of the girls he lured were from backgrounds that made them vulnerable, she said.

'Brainwashed'

He first made contact through a chatroom with one girl from Rhondda Cynon Taf when she was just 14. She said she was 16 and gave him her mobile phone number.

The girl later began what Miss Evans called a "complex relationship" with Baker.

They became engaged and he told her he would marry her, but she also felt "brainwashed" and was afraid of him.

The court heard how he gave her the drug diazepam, a tranquilliser, and descriptions of images of Baker engaged in extreme sex acts.

In mitigation, defence barrister Peter Murphy QC said Baker had not coerced the girls into sexual acts, adding the girls were already sexually experienced and some had worked as prostitutes prior to meeting Baker.

Some of the complainants in the case and their families were at Monday's hearing.

A team of police officers has worked on his case since Baker's arrest in September 2007, the court heard.