http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100202/tuk-brothel-owner-jailed-for-11-years-6323e80.htmlA brothel owner who used internet chatrooms and the prospect of modelling work to lure girls as young as 14 has been jailed for 11 years.
Wayne Baker, 61, exploited vulnerable girls and young women to make money from them as prostitutes and for his own sexual gratification, Newport Crown Court heard.
Baker, of Faron Place, Ebbw Vale, admitted 22 charges involving child prostitution and child pornography, keeping a brothel, assault causing actual bodily harm, supplying a controlled drug to another and making and taking indecent photographs of a child.
The court heard he lied about his age in teenage chatrooms on the internet.
At the beginning of a two-day sentencing hearing on Monday, Elwen Evans QC, prosecuting, said: "The case is to a significant extent about the exploitation of highly vulnerable and impressionable girls and young women."
She said Baker had "quasi-legitimate" businesses, including one called Mayfair Models, but his interest in girls also led him to make contact with them through the internet and lie about his age.
The court heard how he ran a brothel from his home - known locally as "the brothel on the hill" - where men paid to attend sex parties on the last Friday of every month.
Customers paid £120 an hour for sex with the prostitutes Baker controlled, and in one year his escort operation turned over an estimated £80,000.
Sentencing, Judge David Morris said: "You are a man with an obsession with sex. More disturbingly, you are a man with a compunction to dominate women for sexual purposes and derive sexual pleasure from degrading and humiliating women sexually."
He sentenced Baker to 11 years in prison, of which he will serve half, followed by a four-year supervised sentence in the community when he will have to sign the sex offenders register and become the subject of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order
