Former 'wild child' jailed for rape after last-chance snub

Wesley Gordon has a criminal record stretching back to his youth and achieved national notoriety at the age of just four when he was expelled from school for tipping a jug of custard over a dinner lady.

Now 23, Gordon of Browning Close, Foxhill, Sheffield, has been locked up for seven-and-a-half years after raping a 19-year-old woman in a house in Wincobank.

He initially denied the offence when he was questioned, but pleaded guilty when the case reached Sheffield Crown Court where he was due to stand trial.

Det Con Chris Campbell, who investigated the offence, said: "The victim was a 19-year-old female who he met at a social gathering, and the offence occurred at the same place.

"Gordon was arrested at the scene on the day. It was a protracted investigation and I am very happy with the outcome."

Last December Gordon, who had 20 convictions to his name at the time, was given an "exceptional" chance to turn his life around after a barrister persuaded a judge to suspend a jail sentence after he attacked his girlfriend.

He had received a 52-week suspended jail sentence the previous May after being convicted of assault, but five months later he was arrested again after his girlfriend dialled 999 when he hit her during a row in his car.

The court heard he had been "driving dangerously, doing handbrake turns, and scaring her" before he pulled over and hit her more than 10 times.

Judge Simon Lawler QC sentenced Gordon to 48 weeks in prison, suspended for two years, after he pleaded guilty to actual bodily harm and assaulting a police constable.

The judge said he was prepared to give him an "exceptional" chance to put his "life in order" but warned he would be jailed for his next offence.

Gordon grew up on the Langsett estate in Sheffield. In 2003 his mother, June West, revealed he had started smoking – and terrorising his neighbourhood – at the age of four.

He was expelled from school again at the age of 13 for violence, and had even attacked his mother and siblings and smashed up their family home, she said.

When he was a teenager, his mother begged the authorities for help dealing with him.

She described her life with him as "a living hell".