Abusive calls man jailed

A man who was arrested in Rochdale after making more than 100 threatening phone calls has been sent to prison for four years.

Ian Parry, 48, from Bacup, told some of his female victims that he would abduct or assault them if they did not say obscene things over the phone.

Parry admitted eight counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm at Burnley Crown Court and asked that 96 other offences involving abusive calls be taken into consideration.

Between September 2006 and 2007 the father of three made more then 100 calls from phone boxes in Lancashire and north Manchester.

The eight counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm relate to eight calls that were so serious that they inflicted psychiatric harm on the victims.

One of the calls involved a 16-year-old boy who Parry ordered to put on his mother's underwear after Parry claimed he had abducted her and had her tied to a bed.

A joint surveillance operation between police and BT security meant he was caught in Rochdale in August last year.

Sentencing Parry, Judge Simon Newell said: "I have to take into account what it seems to me was the planning and the premeditation involved in searching out and finding the target women.

"The persistency in the period of time the offences took place and the significant fear and anxiety that you created in the mind of a very large number of women in East Lancashire and North Manchester, to the extent that there was a full-scale police operation to arrest the perpetrator of those offences."

He added: "Those offences were not just sexual but there was a substantial element of verbal sadism and demeaning and humiliating behaviour in obtaining power over your victims."

Det Sgt Steve Holgate, of Lancashire Police, said: "During this investigation it has become clear that Parry gains sexual gratification from humiliating, threatening and dominating his victims whilst on the phone.

"He subjects them to a barrage of obscene threats and is indiscriminate in his targeting of people whether they are children, adults or elderly people.

"The effect these phone calls have had on their victims can only be described as horrific."