A sex predator who snatched two teenage girls and then carried out serious sexual assaults on them in secluded spots more than 20 years ago was jailed for 16 years this morning (December 19).
Alec Housden, of Kingsbury Gardens, Dunstable, attacked a 16-year-old victim and then a 17-year-old in strikingly similar incidents only two months apart, during the spring and summer of 2002.
St Albans Crown Court heard that Housden lay in wait for his victims in Harpenden, grabbing them as they walked alone and then dragging them into the cover of trees and bushes, where he attacked them.
Afterwards, he told each of the girls not to move or he would come back and attack them again, before fleeing.
Following the assaults, police recovered his DNA. At the time, Housden, who worked as a travelling salesman, wasn’t known to police and the DNA sample couldn’t be matched. Regardless, Hertfordshire Police never closed their investigation into the crimes and remained in contact with both victims.
It was during a cold case review of the investigation in June 2022 that detectives looked again at all the evidence, including forensic evidence.
Housden had been arrested back in 2017 for a domestic matter that was never proceeded with. However, his DNA had been taken at the time and was now held by the police.
As a result, in April 2023, Housden was arrested in an early morning swoop on his home in Bedfordshire and a DNA match was subsequently confirmed for the 2002 offences. When police examined his computer, they found disturbing images depicting schoolgirls in woodland settings.
Today, Housden who had been in his late 30s when he carried out the assaults, appeared in the dock aged 60, now a grandfather.
Housden pleaded guilty to the kidnap of a 16-year-old off Piggottshill Lane, Harpenden, on April 7, 2002, and indecently assaulting her. He also pleaded guilty to kidnapping and indecently assaulting a 17-year-old girl at the same location on June 19, 2002.
Sentencing him to an extended 16-year jail sentence, Judge Francis Sheridan told him: “They were both terrified and frozen with fear.
“You pleaded guilty because the evidence against you was overwhelming.”
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