A ‘bully’ described as a psychopath who raped and threatened to bury his victim where it would 'never be found' has been jailed for 14 years. 

Gordon Luetchford, who subjected the woman to humiliating sexual assaults in 2016, will spend an extended four years on licence after a judge at Oxford Crown Court ruled he was a dangerous offender. He was found guilty in June of rape, sexual assault and making threats to kill.

At his sentencing hearing on Tuesday morning, Judge Nigel Daly heard the 54-year-old continued to deny wrongdoing.

He told bearded Leutchford, who in 1986 was labelled a ‘psychopath’ by a doctor in South Shields: “In my judgement you knew of [your victim’s] vulnerability both mental and physical and I consider that you exploited that vulnerability to exercise control over her and committed forcible sexual assaults on her.”

During the trial, jurors heard how Luetchford subjected his victim - who cannot be identified for legal reasons - to a terrifying assault at her west Oxfordshire home in 2016 after he became angry about messages from a support worker he had found on her phone.

He struck her on the head with a pillow, verbally abused her and sexually assaulted her, prosecutor Charles Ward-Jackson said.

The woman said Luetchford then threatened to kill her if she went to the police, saying he would bury her body where it would never be found.

Mr Ward-Jackson said: “That was, in a sense, his parting shot: ‘I realise I’ve abused you, don’t tell the police or else’ was really what he was saying.”

The prosecutor described Luetchford, who was also convicted of twice raping his victim, as short-tempered and bullying.

He had previous convictions for violence and was jailed in 2012 for stabbing a former partner in the stomach. He was out of prison on licence when he committed the 2016 offences.

Mitigating, Tracy Ayling QC acknowledged her client maintained he was innocent of wrongdoing. But she asked the judge to stop short of imposing a life sentence, reserved for the very worst offenders.

The father-of-10 had no previous convictions for sexual offences and had remained out of trouble during the three years he’d been waiting for the trial to go ahead.

His mother, in her 90s, suffered from cancer and could not travel to visit him in prison. He would be unlikely to see her before she died, Ms Ayling said.

The defendant told the author of a psychiatric report prepared for Tuesday’s hearing that he did not have mental health issues. However, Judge Daly noted that was ‘not the case’. He said: “In 1986 a psychiatrist in South Shields has commented on your behaviour towards your then partner and said, ‘there isn’t much doubt this lad is a psychopath, he just wants his own way and doesn’t care how this is achieved and at whose expense’.”

Luetchford, formerly of West Wycombe Road, High Wycombe, was found guilty of rape, sexual assault, making a threat to kill and controlling behaviour. The jury acquitted him of three other counts of rape.

He will be on the sex offenders' register for life. A restraining order bans him from contacting his victim.

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