Darwen pensioner jailed for 14 years for sex offences (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Darwen pensioner jailed for 14 years for sex offences

7:00pm Friday 15th March 2013 in News

A ‘HIGH risk’ sex offender and convicted killer who admitted a string of rapes and sex assaults on children will not be released from prison until he is into his eighties.

James Joseph Corbett, 74, has been jailed for 14 years after pleading guilty to 14 charges, including four specimen charges of rape on a girl from when she was aged 11 to 15.

Preston Crown Court heard the pensioner, of Ashton Road, Darwen, also admitted 10 other charges which include an attack on a 14-year-old girl in 1969 in Accrington, sex assaults on girls in the 1990s and rapes in the last five years.

Corbett, who is originally from Belfast in Northern Ireland, served six years in jail in the 1970s after being convicted of the manslaughter of May Rothera, a stewardess in a working men’s club in Accrington after he strangled her.

Corbett, who was 37-years-old at the time, strangled the 61-year-old Miners’ Club employee using a bar towel.

He also has convictions for firearms offences in Belfast and drug importation in the 1980s while living in Accrington.

Judge Pamela Badley also extended Corbett’s licence by four years on his release from prison as well as ordering him to sign the sex offenders register for life.

Corbett, who has numerous previous offences of a sexual nature, the last in 1996 when he was convicted of 14 indecent assaults on six different girls under the age of 14 and served four years in jail, has also been disqualified from ever working with children.

Police said the latest conviction came about when victims came forward after reading in the Lancashire Telegraph that he had been given a Sexual Offences Prevention Order after officers discovered indecent images of children on his phone.

Corbett admitted two counts of sexual activity with a child, one of indecent assault, two assaults by penetration of a child under 13, six of sexual assault of a child under 13 and four rapes at Preston Crown Court.

Det Insp Paul Langley said: “Throughout his life Corbett has been a devious and manipulative man who has threatened and intimidated his victims into remaining silent.

“With their bravery in coming forward Corbett is now serving the sentence that he deserves.

“As Judge Badley stated during sentencing the only time in his life that Corbett was not committing offences against children was when he has been previously imprisoned.

“I hope now that the victims and their families can now begin to move on with their lives.”