Violent pimp who raped teenagers after getting them hooked on drugs and made one dig her own grave jailed for 24 years


A brutal ‘pimp’ who raped schoolgirls, gave a victim a cannabis joint laced with heroin, and forced the same female to dig her own grave, has been jailed 24 years.
Junior Chester Bryan, 63, used violence against the much younger females he controlled, with his evil crimes spanning two decades.
The court heard Bryan, who came to London from Jamaica when he was 15, was violent, domineering and manipulative – brutalising victims as young as 14.
He spent time in Middlesbrough in the 1990s and used his force of personality and violence to intimidate his eight victims, forcing some into prostitution.
He raped two teenagers in his bedsit and gave another victim a cannabis joint laced with heroin so she became dependent on it, and him.
One victim met him in a nightclub when she was 18 and had never tried any hard drugs before, but by the time she was 19 she was addicted to crack and heroin and became a prostitute under his control.
And in another instance, he drove the terrified woman to a wasteland and forced her to dig her own grave, stopping only after her repeated pleas for him to do so.
Bryan also hit the same victim with a hammer, the court heard.
The court heard two underage victims were lured to his home and “abandoned” with him as his “prey”.
He raped, punched, strangled and threatened to shoot one frightened girl, claiming to have a gun in his bedsit.
He abducted and overpowered another underage girl and tried to rape her, but she managed to run away when he was interrupted by a visitor.
He sexually assaulted a third underage girl and supplied her with heroin before she realised he was encouraging her to become a child prostitute and escaped.
Another girl was barely over the age of consent when Bryan laced her cannabis joints with heroin, a “deliberate ploy” to make her dependent on him.
He repeatedly raped her, punching and strangling her, and subjected her to agonising and degrading sexual assaults, one of which would now be classed as rape.
Bryan hit her feet and legs with a hammer at a B&B and twice forced her into his car boot.
He drove her down a dirt track to an isolated area where he held her head under water and forced her to dig a grave with her bare hands.
Another girl only just over the age of consent had already worked as a child prostitute and used crack cocaine who Bryan “treated her as his property”.
He dealt heroin to her, incited her to work as a prostitute and raped her violently at least twice.
“She felt unable to resist and appeared to regard this as an ordeal which she had to endure to receive her drugs,” added the judge.
One young woman found him attractive and glamorous but he forced her into the life of a sex worker to satisfy his own drug addiction.
He attacked and beat her for not wanting to work as a prostitute, punching, kicking and suffocating her with a cushion until she “thought I was gonna die”.
He groomed her and subjected her to “sustained and systemic psychological abuse”, and raped her when she came to him for drugs.
He was convicted of 20 offences and admitted three more, and they included rape, sexual assault, false imprisonment, living on prostitution and supplying class A drugs.
They occurred between 1993 and 2013 and took place in Middlesbrough, Leeds, Darlington and London.
Judge Howard Crowson, sentencing at Teesside Crown Court, told Bryan he had destroyed the lives of others to fulfil his selfish desires.
The judge said he was a “dominating, violent sex offender” – who had a “dangerously distorted view” of young women.
Prosecutor Richard Bennett said the day Brayn “spiked” one of his victims was the day her “life changed forever”.
The court heard from three victims who were all 14 when they met Bryan, with one describing him as like a “father figure” as he manipulated her with heroin.
Several of his eight victims said they still have nightmares of the ordeal he subjected to them to.
A number also have been left so disturbed by what Bryan subjected them to, with their dreams of futures careers or studies being destroyed.
Jeanette Smith, of the CPS, said: “To Bryan, these girls were merely a resource for him to use for his own financial gain and sexual gratification.
“Some of the assaults on these women were merely to ‘teach them a lesson’ about his perceived authority over them.”
He was cleared of a further eight charges, including five of rape, and one of indecency with a child.
The judge thanked police, the legal teams and jurors for persevering with the six-week case which finished just a day before trials were suspended due to coronavirus restrictions.
He said if the trial had lasted that extra day, it would have meant the justice his eight victims deserved would have been delayed with a retrial required.
Bryan was sentenced to 24 years in jail, with an extended five-year tariff, having determined he was dangerous.