A CHILDREN’S entertainer who raped a teenager in the 1990s is finally paying the price for the crime more than two decades later.

Stanley Smiles, who worked as a balloon artist and magician, raped the young woman four times during a performing “road trip”.

The attacks took place in the back of his van, including once when parked at Hamsterley Forest, at his home at the time, in North Shields, and while staying at the home of another children’s entertainer, on Merseyside, where the victim says she was also raped by another, unknown man.

Durham Crown Court heard that the victim tried to get on with her life and did not want her family to know about the incidents, so she said nothing for many years.

But, having suffered deep psychological trauma, for which she has undergone counselling and sought medication to help her sleep, she finally came forward.

Supported by her community psychiatric nurse she reported the attacks in 2018, by which time both her parents had died.

Smiles, now 67, who was in his late 40s when the incidents took place, was traced to Chillingham Castle, in Northumberland, where he was working as fisheries manager for the Wakefield family.

He denied the allegations.

Accused of four counts of rape and one of indecent assault, he pleaded not guilty to all the charges at the court, in January.

He stood trial in September, maintaining his denials, but he was found guilty of all the offences on unanimous jury verdicts on the fifth day of the hearing.

Smiles, of Golden Square, Wooler, in Northumberland, was remanded in custody after the trial and appeared for his sentencing hearing on Friday by video link from nearby Durham Prison.

Ian West, prosecuting, read a lengthy impact statement prepared by the victim, in which she said the burden of having to relieve her experiences at the trial, being accused of telling lies, caused the depression and anxiety she suffers, to become worse.

But she said now knowing her attacker is now convicted and behind bars has brought her some relief and sense of closure.

Lewis Kerr, for Smiles, said the defendant has only one previous, minor, unrelated conviction and has health issues, so a lengthy period behind bars would prove particularly difficult.

Imposing a 17-year prison sentence, Judge James Adkin told Smiles he had caused so much damage to the victim’s life, “by sexual exploitation” in her youth.

Smiles was also made subject of registration as a sex offender and a Sexual Harm Prevention Order, as well as a restraining order, prohibiting him from contacting or approaching the victim, all for life.

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