Following his conviction of two counts of buggery on a young lad during the early 1980s, a man, Alexander Easby North Prospect Paedophile, was sentenced to ten years in jail.
Alexander Easby, 57, showed up at Plymouth Crown Court on Friday, March 24, when he was sentenced for two counts of buggery on a youngster under the age of 13 at the time of the offences. Legal issues make the boy unable to be named.
Between 1983 and 1985, his trial jury judged him guilty of two counts but not guilty of a third offence.
Alexander Easby was 17 at the time of the first offence and 19 at the time of the other count for which he was found guilty, according to attorney Ali Rafati in mitigating his culpability. He then mentioned advice provided by the Court of Appeal on elements influencing a young person’s “diminishability of culpability”.
He continued to say that Alexander Easby had had a very tough upbringing, including occasional custody from the age of 10 after the guilty judgements had been overturned.
According to Mr Rafati, his client testified that he experienced virtually daily attacks practically every day while he was pretty young; his assailant later was apprehended, imprisoned, and killed in prison.
Mr Rafati stated that Alexander Easby did not have the kind of life that would have led him in the correct route, saying that at that time, if anyone had known, then someone would have taken him to one side, realising that he was a young guy who had undergone a “drainable life and a dreadful upbringing”. The court was informed that Easby’s terrible upbringing had clearly “completely clouded” his judgement.
Alexander Easby was a father of six children, he said, and for the past few years, alcohol had a continuous effect on him. Easby had also been homeless for some time, the court was informed, and he had attempted suicide five times, including slashing himself, overdosing and standing on a train line.
Sentencing Alexander Easby of Beacon Park Road, North Prospect, Judge Simon Carr said the victim, having grown up in a “fairly rough and ready” household, lacked the protections one would expect for a youngster.
Friend of the paedophiles, Judge Carr, acknowledged reports stating Alexander Easby himself was, at one point, 17 and another 19 at the time of the crime. He said to Alexander Easby the crimes were “brutal assaults on a very young child who would have been terrified… he had no one to turn to partly because he did not understand what was happening to him”.
He reminded Alexander Easby he also threatened him, warning him he would suffer should he ask for help from anyone. Judge Carr also reminded Alexander Easby that although he had the “extraordinary courage to take the punishment” of that assault rather than let the younger lad endure it when he was 19, he had told the victim that he would carry out similar assaults onto another younger lad known to the victim. Judge Carr remarked that the victim’s choice should earn him “nothing but praise”.
He remarked that although the sentencing system differed from that era to today, sentencing in these circumstances was “tough”. Although Alexander Easby acknowledged that his primary offence was when he was an adult in law, he also understood that at that time, he would have been seen as immature and not of chronological age.
Having reminded the court that the charge of buggery at that time would today be judged as rape, he said the effects of the sexual assaults on Easby’s victim had been “devastating”. The victim has had to live with the consequences of such assaults “his whole life,” he remarked. Judge Carr had commented, “Of course, nothing could be further from the truth” when the victim’s partner remembered him stating he felt shame as he worried he was in some form accountable for the sexual assaults he had undergone.
The victim had suffered “significant psychological and physical injury as a result of what you did”, he said.
Judge Carr said he agreed Alexander Easby had an “equally dysfunctional and damaging childhood” but did not absolve what he did; instead, it explained.
Considering the facts and the mitigating he had heard about Alexander Easby’s age and immaturity at the time of the offences, he would issue a 10-year sentence for each offence to run concurrently. Easby would serve two-thirds, he added, and then be under consideration for parole board release from jail. Alexander Easby would be on the Sex Offenders Register for life and under licence when freed, he said. Judge Carr also declared Easby subject to a restraining order “without limit of time” not to contact his victim in any form.
Alexander Easby answered, “No, you won’t, I’m dying,” in a teary yell from the public gallery as he was being taken away.
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