December 2015 Violent pervert jailed for life for raping three schoolgirls A VIOLENT sex predator has been jailed for life today for raping three schoolgirls in the 1980s and 1990s. Derek Coles, 49, of Lord Street, Runcorn must serve a minimum of 13 years and 95 days before he will be considered for release. He had been convicted of five charges of rape, indecent assault and attempted buggery following a seven day trial at Chester Crown Court. Coles preyed on three victims, who were known to him, when they were teenagers. The first victim was aged between 13 and 15 when she suffered persistent sexual abuse over a two year period in the early 1980s. Most of the assaults took place at Coles’ home. The pair did have consensual sex but on a number of occasions the victim disclosed that she had been forced into it against her wishes. She described Coles as ‘controlling and demanding’ and said that he was often violent towards her. The second victim was 15 when she was attacked in the early 1990s. She met Coles through a friend during a night out. Whilst in a taxi together, Coles claimed that he needed to go home to pick something up. When they arrived at the address he invited the victim inside the property where he raped her. She managed to escape and ran out of the house onto the road where she flagged down a passing car with a man and woman in it. She disclosed what had happened and the pair took her home and urged her to tell her parents. The following day she told a friend but was too ashamed to tell her parents. The third victim was also 15 when she was raped in the late 1990s. She was staying at a friend’s house and was on a night out when they were invited to a party at another house. During the night the victim went upstairs to the bathroom. As she walked out, the defendant was on the landing and he approached her, pushed her into a bedroom and raped her. The victim went back downstairs following the incident and ran off immediately as she was scared. Coles later threatened her not to tell anyone about what had happened. Coles was arrested in 2014 after one of the victims came forward and reported what had happened to police. In May 2015 he was subsequently charged with the offences. November 2015 Serial rapist found guilty of campaign of sexual violence A serial sex predator from Runcorn described as a ‘monster’ by the victim he subjected to a horrific two-year reign of sexual violence has been found guilty of raping three females. Derek Coles, 49, of Lord Street, Runcorn, was remanded into custody to be sentenced at a later date after a jury of nine men and three women delivered their verdicts today.  They found Coles guilty of seven charges, five of those for rape involving three separate victims, one for an attempted serious sexual assault against one of the complainants, and one of indecent assault against the same person. The offences took place in the 1980s and 1990s. He was found not guilty of one count of rape against his primary victim, who Coles had preyed upon over two years, Warrington Crown Court heard. The woman was a teenager younger than 16 at the time of the offences. Two of the charges were ‘specimen counts’ and reflected multiple rapes over the duration of crimes she suffered. Judge Raj Shetty, presiding yesterday, summarised the evidence and arguments given by prosecutor Sion Ap Mihangell and defence counsel Michael Davies. He recounted how the woman had told the court how she was ‘raped and battered constantly’ for two years by Coles. She moved schools to escape his assaults but Coles would follow her in a red Ford Escort, even when she boarded a bus to lie on the floor while a ‘kindly’ bus driver would shake off her pursuer. However, she received little sanctuary nor solace from adults as a whole. She said she twice asked for help from the police, once when she visited ‘Halton police station’ covered in bruises only to be told that nothing could be done and another when she was left beaten and bloodied by Coles in an alley, only for a patrol car to arrive and Coles to tell the officers that they need not worry because: “I’m Mark Coles’s brother.” A PE teacher asked the girl whether she was pregnant when she turned up to school with bruises, and her father, who would later apologise for his lack of intervention, branded her a ‘slut’ upon learning she had become pregnant. Coles was today found guilty of raping other victims. Coles had forced himself on one woman in a living room in Runcorn after they left a pub on the ‘pretence’ of going to a party. He raped the other in a bedroom and she was invited to a ‘karaoke event’. The one not guilty offence related to an allegation of an incident of rape that had been reported to have included headbutting and had been damned by the victim as ‘the most gutter trailer trash act’ she had endured. He had denied all the charges but accepted he had sex with the primary victim, but insisted that she ‘always consented’. His defence counsel never disputed that the other two victims had been raped but argued that the offender was someone else. Coles has past convictions for attempted indecent assault, two rapes and one count of false imprisonment. The offences were committed 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.