Here are some of the Swindon criminals jailed this week...

Paedophile caged for sexual assaults

Pervert Dale Barnett who repeatedly sexually abused a young child was jailed for 12 years.

The Grange Drive man, 54, molested the girl more than 30 times between April 1999 and early January 2001. The youngster was aged between eight and 10 at the time of the abuse.

Barnett had denied the charges, but a jury found him guilty on three counts of sexually assaulting the girl.

They cleared him of a second multi-incident count alleging he did it more than 20 more times.

The panel returned unanimous verdicts on one count that he touched child sexually and a second that he did at least 10 more times.

They also found him guilty by majority of doing the same on at least 20 further occasions.

As well as the jail term he must also register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and is banned from working with children or vulnerable adults.

Violent crack addict

A crack addict who smashed a brick into the head of a disabled woman to steal her drugs was jailed for two years and four months.

Craig Parmenter also held a broken bottle to her neck and threatened to kill her during the violent attack after turning up at her flat in the middle of the night.

 

Judge Robert Pawson, sitting at Swindon Crown Court, asked why the 31-year-old had not been charged with robbery in relation to the incident.

“If you hit someone over the head with a brick then hold a broken bottle to their neck and say ‘I’ll stick this in your neck and kill you,’ then ‘Give me your crack’,” he said.

“I am just amazed in the circumstances that I am sentencing this man for theft and actual bodily harm. Most people would say it is a robbery.”

£70k in the bank - but still dealing drugs

A cocaine dealer set up his drugs business to fund his own habit.

But at Swindon Crown Court this week, Ross Zielinski found that crime doesn’t pay. The 29-year-old was jailed for two years and three months.

The court heard Zielinski had £70,000 inheritance in the bank, but still dealt drugs.

His car was pulled over by drugs squad officers in Blunsdon St Andrews last March. Zielinski was already suspected of being involved in the trade.

As they approached the car they saw he was trying to hide something and when they spoke to him to him he was twitchy.

He was arrested and said he had cannabis at home which he would hand to them and when they got there they seized about £900 of the drug.

As well as the drugs police also found £2,420 in cash in his room, his car and being carried by him.Mr Meeke said he then said he was unwell and rushed to the toilet, but officers realised he was feigning it when they saw he was trying to flush something away.

Although some of it was dissolved the rest was found to be almost one-and-a-half grams of super-strength cocaine.

Wreath vandal 'doesn't hate Britain'

Homeless man Ashwani Kumar claimed he didn't hate Britain, despite trashing poppy wreaths on Swindon’s town centre cenotaph.

The 54-year-old admitted a charge of outraging public decency when he appeared before Salisbury Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday.

He told JPs he had no memory of hurling up to 50 poppy wreaths from the Regent Street memorial in the early hours of Saturday night. The court heard Kumar had drunk three-quarters of a bottle of vodka before he had blacked out.

 

Kumar, who has lived in the UK for 34 years, said he had no issue with British patriotism and in fact often paid his respects at memorials.

Instead, he claimed prison officers had failed to release him from jail on Friday with important mental health medication.

He was sentenced to eight weeks imprisonment and told to pay a £115 victim surcharge.