Tech multi-millionaire jailed for 15 years for rapes and sexual assault

A tech entrepreneur who raped two women and sexually assaulted a third over several decades has been jailed for 15 years.

Lawrence Jones, 55, who became a multi-millionaire after founding web hosting provider UKFast with his wife, was convicted in January of assaulting a female employee in a hotel while on a business trip in 2013.

In a second trial last month he was found guilty of drugging and raping two women in the 1990s while he was working as a hotel bar pianist.

The court heard they were given substances which left them ‘stupefied and partially conscious’.

One said Jones gave her something to sniff which had an ‘immediate impact’. Jurors were told she ‘felt frozen, as if she were made of lead’ and could not fight back.

The other said she felt excessively affected by a glass of wine and what she believed was cannabis, leaving her ‘not completely conscious’.

She told police: ‘It was so bizarre and so fast, and so sort of opportunistic.’

Jones, from Hale Barns, Greater Manchester, was awarded an MBE in 2015 following the success of UKFast, which employed around 500 people.

Sentencing him on Friday at Manchester Crown Court, Judge Sarah Johnston told Jones: ‘The three offences highlight that you thought you could behave with impunity.

‘They are characterised by entitlement, dominance and a total lack of regard for the rights and freedoms of these three women and, in my view, an element of sinister premeditation.”

Jones received a 14-year sentence for one of the rapes, a seven-year concurrent jail term for the second and a 12-month consecutive custodial sentence for the sexual assault.

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