Rapist pensioner has 'soft' Worcester sentence increased on appeal

James Boyles, 69, who raped the same victim on a number of occasions while she was sleeping and filmed the assaults, has had his sentence, imposed at Worcester Crown Court, increased following the intervention of Solicitor General, Rt Hon Michael Ellis QC MP.

When police searched his computer, they found that Boyles had filmed another woman while she slept using a hidden camera. Police also found that Boyles had downloaded and made several indecent images of children.

Boyles was convicted of 15 sexual offences and was sentenced to four years imprisonment and given a sexual harm prevention order on September 8 this year at Worcester Crown Court as reported in the Worcester News at the time.

Following a referral to the Court of Appeal by the Solicitor General, on December 1 the sentence was found to be unduly lenient and has been increased to six years imprisonment.

Speaking after the hearing, the Solicitor General said: "The sickening behaviour of the offender should be met with the full force of the law. The Court of Appeal has rightly increased his sentence."

We reported how the pensioner also called child abuse ‘art’ and doctored photos to make it look like a man was raping a little girl.

He admitted 15 sexual offences including three rapes, one attempted rape and a sexual assault against the same woman while she slept, touching her naked breasts.

The rapes were committed without the woman’s knowledge while she was ‘unconscious’ after taking sleeping pills and drinking alcohol.

The attacks were recorded by Boyles and saved on his computer, the vile videos only found when police investigated intelligence that indecent images of children had been downloaded at the address.

The frail, small and stooped 69-year-old of William Tennant Way, Upton, looked far older than his years as he hobbled into court using a walking stick.

He had already pleading guilty to 13 offences, admitting a further charge of rape and voyeurism before he was sentenced.

The defendant, who suffers from asthma and COPD, showed no emotion when the sentence was announced by Judge Nicolas Cartwright for the offences which happened between 2004 and 2011.

The other charges he admitted included voyeurism against both the first victim and a second, also an adult female, using secret cameras to record them.

The pensioner, previously of Honeybourne and Broadway, also made indecent ‘pseudo photographs’ of a child, Photoshopping a man’s genitals onto an image of a child to make it look like he was having sex with the girl, aged four, calling the file ‘sleeping princess’.

He admitted making indecent images of children at category A (the most serious kind showing adults raping children), B and C and possession of eight prohibited images. We had previously reported how he admitted making indecent photos/pseudo photographs of children - 25 still images at category A and 11 at category B. He also pleaded guilty to possession of eight prohibited images between May 1, 2010 and April 11, 2019.

The pensioner admitted two further counts of making indecent photographs of children at category A (12 moving images and 11 still images at category A).

He admitted two counts of making indecent images at category B (two moving images and 11 still images) and one count of making 42 still images at category C.

The offences came to light when police searched the defendant’s previous address and seized his computers, finding videos of the defendant either raping or attempting to rape a woman on four separate occasions.

One of the victims described feeling ‘disgusted and sick’ at the knowledge she had been filmed naked without her consent. However, the woman who had been raped said she had not suffered psychological harm, describing the incidents as ‘non-consensual intercourse’ rather than rape.

In total he made 33 videos and created 35 stills of the second victim of voyeurism. In police interview the defendant said of the child abuse images: “It was curiosity really – certainly not something I would physically take part in or do.”

He also told officers he had been viewing indecent images of children for about 15 years.

He said of the images found on his computers: “I’m not trying to put it on some high intellectual plain but it’s some form of art, whether you like or not.”

Boyles said of the sexual attacks on the sleeping woman: “I would not call it rape.”

The woman who was raped spoke in court and said: “I have not seen the video of the rape and do not wish to do so. It would rather label it non-consensual (sex) than rape.”

Judge Cartwright, who imposed the original sentence, said the offences were aggravated in that they involved different forms of rape and that the offence was ‘repeated on several occasions’. However, he gave him a third off the length of his sentence because of his early guilty plea and discounted a further six months to reflect the tougher prison regime during the Covid-19 pandemic (fewer visits and more time for inmates in their cells).

The judge said indecent images of children were ‘ghastly’ and added: “The harm is that real children somewhere in the world are the victims of the things that are being filmed.”

The judge also imposed a sexual harm prevention order which will remain in force for the rest of the defendant’s life and restricts his contact with female children under the age of 16.

As a sex offender, Boyles will also be subject to notification requirements for the rest of his life.