Attacker targeted girls on Wharfedale line trains (From Ilkley Gazette)

Attacker targeted girls on Wharfedale line trains

7:20am Thursday 3rd June 2010

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A sex stalker who terrorised his victims in a hideous Halloween mask has been given a seven-year extended prison sentence.

Deviant thrill-seeker Gary Mawson targeted young girls on the railway then struck under cover of darkness, a court heard.

He will spend four years behind bars and three on extended licence.

The former fitness instructor took cannabis and anabolic steroids before boarding the Wharfedale line to seek out and follow his prey.

Mawson, 31, of Woolcomb Court, Heaton, Bradford, pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl and indecently exposing himself to three teenagers and a young woman between November 7 last year and January 26.

Arrested on February 18, he told police they had caught him “at the right time” because he was a danger to young girls, Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday.

He said he bought the red devil mask, found by police at his home, from a supermarket at Halloween.

Mawson told detectives he was overtaken by the desire to commit the offences and felt removed from himself.

He stalked his victims on the Wharfedale line to avoid recognition in his home area.

Prosecutor Neil Clark told the court Mawson first struck at 9.30pm on November 7 when he followed two 15-year-old girls from Burley-in-Wharfedale Railway Station.

They heard a noise in bushes and saw masked Mawson performing a sex act on himself.

On December 23, a 22-year-old woman at home alone in a her ground floor flat heard someone trying her locked back door.

She saw a hooded figure outside her window wearing a mask reminiscent of Edvard Munch’s The Scream painting. His was committing a sex act on himself.

When challenged, Mawson asked: “Do you want some?”

Five days later, Mawson, wearing a scarf round his face, followed a 14-year-old girl home from Burley station.

He called over to her and stood under a street light exposing himself.

On January 9, Mawson, with his lower face covered, stalked two girls aged 14 and 15 from the station at 6pm. He pushed the older girl into the road and sexually assaulted her friend, fleeing when she screamed.

On January 26, a girl of 13 saw Mawson in the waiting room at Menston Station and recognised him as a man who had tried to take photographs of her on the train.

She saw Mawson with his hand down his trousers, trying to hide what he was doing with a newspaper.

Mr Clark said the train guard recalled seeing Mawson acting strangely and sitting near to young girls.

In 2002, Mawson was sentenced to a community order for making obscene phone calls to three woman clients at a Keighley gym where he worked as a fitness instructor.

He got their phone numbers from enrolment forms and pestered them daily with anonymous whispered obscenities.

Mawson’s barrister, Robin Frieze, said he “kidded” himself he did not need help and a sex offender treatment programme attached to the sentence was revoked.

He was remorseful, intelligent, and now motivated to seek treatment.

Judge Robert Bartfield said Mawson posed a serious risk to young women.

After the case, Detective Chief Inspector Mabs Hussain, of Airedale and North Bradford CID, said: "We are pleased with the outcome of today's proceedings which ensure Mawson will be taken off our streets.

“He clearly posed a danger to women through committing a series of escalating offences which caused alarm in the community and significant distress to his victims.

“It was due to the joint work between the community and the police that he was captured and brought to justice.

“I want to thank residents and partners in the community as well as colleagues in British Transport Police and the Ilkley Neighbourhood Police Team for working with us closely in this investigation.”

Detective Sergeant Granville Sellers, from British Transport Police, said: “Thankfully, offences such as this are uncommon on the railway and hopefully this conviction, which was made all the more possible by the existence of CCTV images, will seek to bring justice to his victims.”

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