Man, 73, who cannot be jailed handed supervision order for rape of girl in 1977

A 73-year-old man who raped a young girl nearly 50 years ago has been given a supervision order after he was deemed mentally unfit.

Denis Coles was 26 in 1977 when he raped an 11-year-old girl walking home in Cardiff.

Police reopened the cold case in 2019, using new DNA techniques to re-examine samples which pointed to Coles.

Until then, the crime had gone unsolved with one man being arrested but found not guilty.

Coles, who now lives in a care home in Cardiff, was deemed unfit at an earlier trial but a jury found that he did the act in a “trial of the facts”.

A trial of the facts allows evidence to be tested but does not require a jury to return a guilty or not guilty verdict, only whether the accused committed the alleged acts.

Sentencing him at Cardiff Crown Court on Thursday, Judge Tracey Lloyd-Clarke, the Recorder of Cardiff, said Coles could not be given jail time but had he been fit to face trial, would have received a substantial custodial sentence.

She handed him a supervision order for two years and ordered him to sign the sex offenders register.

In June, ITV Wales spoke with 'Michelle', which is not her real name, the victim of the horrific crime.

“There was a guy on the pavement and as I was walking towards him, I realised he wasn’t moving out of my way," she tells ITV Cymru Wales.

“From there, it escalated and then my life changed drastically."

Michelle has a legal right to lifelong anonymity due to the nature of what happened to her.

As she walked up a lane close to the end of her route, a man stopped her, grabbed her by her shoulder and told her "right, you're coming with me".

She says she felt “absolutely terrified", and pushed it to the back of her mind: "it’s a blank only because I was so young and I was just trying to cope with life at that time.

“I was just thinking 'am I going to be able to make it home?' That was the most traumatic thing for me."

“I was just wrapped up in cotton wool," she remembers. "I wasn’t allowed to go anywhere or do anything, and all because of one person.

“I didn’t have a childhood and I think that was the worst part of it. When I should have had fun, laughing and being happy with my friends, I just had this in the back of my mind the whole time."

In her victim impact statement, which was read to the court, Michelle said: “This is something that I should never have to put into writing, in fact, no one should have to explain the trauma they have endured over the last 44 years that was down to someone else gaining pleasure.

“The night I was raped was the most traumatic of my life, I was just 11 years old, enjoying my evening at Girl Guides and I never saw this coming.”

She said her childhood was taken from her “in the blink of an eye”, changing her whole life and affecting her mental health.

She added: “In my eyes Denis Coles knew exactly what he was doing that night, waiting at the top of the hill for his victim to walk past, unfortunately, that victim was me.”

Michelle was walking home from Girl Guides when she was approached by Coles, who pulled up on a bike and asked her for the time.

Shortly after, he dragged her away and raped her. Afterwards, he told her to count to 50 before speeding away.

Michelle ran home and immediately told her mother, who would usually have met her on her walk home but was looking after her son who had become unwell.

In handing down her sentence, Judge Lloyd-Clarke said: “A cold case review was conducted in 2019, police still had the tapings taken from the clothing, a search of the national database led to the defendant.

“DNA from the semen found on the tapings was compared to the defendant’s DNA, there was a match probability of at least one billion.”

Judge Lloyd-Clarke said through the trial Coles’ mental health deteriorated and he became unfit to be tried but the jury found he did the act.

She said: “There is no doubt that if the defendant had been fit to plead, even at his age, he would have received a very substantial custodial sentence."

“There cannot be anything but considerable sympathy for [the victim], she was the victim of an horrendous offence at a very young age.”

While the judge acknowledged Coles had limited movement, she said she had seen him walk unaided during the trial.

Handing Coles the supervision order, she said: “I have taken into account that other people live and work in the care home and that there may be children present visiting other residents.

“Therefore, I am satisfied that the defendant requires supervision from the probation service.”

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