OAP CHILD RAPIST DIES BEHIND BARS SPARKING PROBE
An investigation is underway after a child rapist died while serving his sentence in prison last month.Maurice Holiday, 80, was jailed for 17 years in 2020 following a trial at Teesside Crown Court where he was found guilty of three counts of rape and six of indecent assault.
The crimes had been carried out against young girls decades earlier.
Now, the Prison and Probations Ombudsman (PPO) has launched an investigation into Holiday's death while incarcerated at HMP Northumberland on July 27 this year.
A spokesperson for the PPO said they could not release any further information surrounding the death until the investigation was completed.
Holiday was already a convicted sex offender when he raped and molested the two girls.
He had served a three-year prison sentence imposed in the 1960s for raping another underage girl whom he and others had lured from an amusement park.
At a trial in 2020 the court heard that as a young man he touched and had sex with the first girl.
She said she later realised he had groomed her.
Holiday went on to rape and sexually assault another girl repeatedly, amid violence and threats to ensure her silence.
The judge, Recorder Allison Hunter QC, told Holiday: “She was subjected to these grotesque offences.
There were threats against her to prevent her from reporting the offences that you committed against her.
She said Holiday, from Darlington, inflicted severe psychological harm on the vulnerable girl and added: "You have shown no remorse." He denied all wrongdoing and put the women through the ordeal of giving evidence in a trial, but a jury unanimously convicted him on three counts of rape and six of indecent assault.
Holiday was jailed for 17 years and placed on the sex offenders' register for life.
The judge spoke to the victims in the public gallery, saying: "Thank you for your dignity.
I’m sorry that the process has been so difficult.
I hope you feel that a measure of justice has been done in this case." The court heard at the time that Holiday was on an "extensive medication regime" for medical conditions including diabetes, sleep apnoea, back pain, a previous heart attack and a hernia.
