A DOUBLE child rapist has been jailed indefinitely.

Reece Appleby, of Ramsay Road, Leytonstone, admitted attacking a 12-year-old girl in Worsley Road, Leytonstone, on December 8 last year.

The 21-year-old also admitted raping a 16-year-old girl in Forest Gate.

Appleby attacked the 12-year-old just yards from his home as she made her way to school.

Snaresbrook Crown Court was told that he followed the girl and cornered her by a wall before dragging her to a nearby front garden where he raped her.

After the attack, Appleby stood chatting with his traumatised victim and was spotted by patrolling police officers.

As they approached him, he rode away on his bike.

The girl later told a friend what had happened and Appleby was arrested on the day of the attack.

He was charged with two counts of rape, kidnap and attempted rape.

Months before, Appleby had been released on bail following an allegation that he had raped a 16-year-old girl in Forest Gate.

Despite denying the attack during a police interview, he later pleaded guilty to all charges.

A psychiatric report found Appleby does not have a personality disorder, but possesses a “maladaptive personality trait which are narcissistic and antisocial in nature”.

He was also found to have “deviant sexual fantasies about children and coercion”

Angharad Mosely, mitigating, said Appleby felt “deep remorse” for the attacks and her client had been subjected to violence as a small child by his carers.

.Statements from his victims and their family’s were read out in court before he was sentenced earlier this month.

The 12-year-old victim said she didn’t like talking to her family and friends about anything anymore and that thoughts of the attack were “constantly” in her mind as she tried to sleep.

“I can’t ever go out by myself again. I’m not sure how I feel about it but I think I am a bit depressed,” she added.

Her mother said: “We as a family will never be able to forget what has happened. We have lots of happy memories, but this evil thing will always be there in our thoughts.”

Judge John Lafferty told Appleby he posed a “high risk” to the public.

He said: “It appears to me that, when your sexual instincts are aroused, you satisfy them regardless of the potential damage to the victim.

“You pose a significant risk and, I would say a high risk, of causing significant injury to members of the public and this is because, when your sexual interest is attracted, you immediately seek to gratify it.

“It seems to me that, until you deal with the multiple problems that gave rise to these offences, there is a need to protect the public from the risk that you pose.”

Judge Lafferty handed Appleby an indeterminate sentence for public protection, with a minimum term of five-and-a-half years.

He also ordered him to sign the sex offenders’ register for life and made a sexual offences prevention order preventing him from working with children under 16.

Details of Appleby’s sentenced could not be reported until the completion of his trial for two cash in transit robberies.

He has subsequently pleaded guilty and will be sentenced in September.

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