June 2006

Sex predator gets 14 years

GANG sex, blackmail, death threats, lighter gas sniffing and sex for rent this man used them all in decades of perversion against young girls and a single mother.

Paedophile Eric Coates (pictured) and his father, Former Labour Councillor Raymond, preyed on those who came into contact with them in their Huby home and elsewhere, Leeds Crown Court heard.

Today, Eric Coates, 51, formerly of Huby, is serving 14 years behind bars after pleading guilty to 15 sexual crimes against girls aged 11 to 14 and a single mother of three who rented a house. He had to be extradited from Serbia to face justice.

Judge Rodney Grant told him: “Those you have abused have suffered in the long-term no-one will know how much. The effect of your behaviour will affect them all their lives”.

Eric Coates admitted ten charges of indecently assaulting children, two of raping girls, two of unlawful sexual intercourse with girls aged under 13 and one of procuring a woman to have sexual intercourse by threats and intimidation.

He will be on the sex offenders register for life and was banned from any job that may bring him into contact with children.

His father Raymond Coates, 76, of Huby, faced 12 sex charges, but may never face trial after doctors declared last year he was too ill to stand the ordeal. None have been proved in court.

Prosecuting, Andrew Campbell QC described how Coates and his father between them had sex 150 times in two years with an Easingwold area girl aged 11 to 12 who used to ride one of their ponies.

The father allegedly started the abuse in 1978, but after the son interrupted one of the sex sessions, Coates junior raped her. Then he began a routine of having sex with her at the pony’s stable and while taking her to pony club meets.

“She felt trapped in this spiral of sexual abuse,” said Mr Campbell.

“Eric Coates threatened to publish pornographic photos he had taken of her, tell her parents and school.”

On one occasion, Coates’s mother, Wendy Coates, walked in and may have witnessed the abuse, but said nothing, said Mr Campbell.

Four years later, Eric Coates lured two 14-year-old girls into his Scarborough flat and encouraged them to sniff lighter fuel before abusing them.

With his father, Eric Coates rented out Scarborough properties where they offered rent favours for sex, said Mr Campbell.

In 2002, one tenant, a single mother of three moved in, they invited her for a “rent discussion” when she was in arrears and both men had sex with her, Mr Campbell told the court. Afterwards, the father allegedly said he would knock two weeks off the rent.

In mitigation, Anton Lodge QC said the father had started the abuse of the pony riding girl and other men had also abused the two Scarborough girls.

Det Sgt Paul Thompson, of North Yorkshire Police, who led the hunt for Eric Coates, said: “I always knew I would get him back. It was only a matter of time.”

Menace quizzed on killing

SEX Fiend Eric Coates was arrested and quizzed by police investigating the murder of Middlesbrough prostitute Vicky Glass.

He was later released from bail without charge, and protested his innocence in an exclusive interview with The Press in 2002.

Coates said he was not able to offer Cleveland police an alibi, because he could not remember where he was on September 24, 2000, the day she went missing.

He openly admitted using prostitutes from the red-light area where she worked.

“I vaguely knew her,” he told our reporter, but maintained he was not involved in her death.

“Knowing what I know of the people there, I believe her death was a warning and a drug killing.

“It is quite sad, and a lot of the girls are living in fear.”

No one has ever been caught for the murder of Vicky Glass.

Frightening history of brother

ERIC Coates’s brother also has a frightening history of perversion and sexual abuse.

Nigel Coates, of Ascot Way, Acomb, York, was jailed for 13 years in 2003 after being found guilty of forcing his ex-wife Linda Allsopp and another woman to have sex with his father, former councillor Raymond Coates. The 76-year-old also faced serious sex charges, but was declared too ill to stand trial.

In an effort to warn to other women suffering a similar plight to tell the police sooner, Mrs Allsopp revealed that Nigel Coates forced her to sleep with complete strangers and make pornographic videos.

The Press recently reported that Paula Coates, 41, of Acomb, York, had married the sex fiend at a chapel in Durham Prison, insisting he was completely innocent and had never acted inappropriately towards her.