A man who was on the run for five years after raping a woman in a Suffolk town and a child sex offender who hid abuse books in his wardrobe are among those jailed in Suffolk this month.
Domonic Rowan
Described as "dangerous", Ipswich Crown Court heard how Domonic Rowan, who also goes by Aaron Royer, was on the run for five years after raping a woman in her home.
The 58-year-old, of no fixed address but formerly of Hackney, was released from a previous prison sentence for kidnap and rape in the summer of 2016 and gained contact details of his next victim the following year.
Rowan offered the victim a secretarial position in a fake business and set up a meeting with the woman at her home to discuss the possibility.
They drank together and the woman made it clear she was not interested in sex but Rowan raped her while she was asleep on the sofa.
After five years of police pursuit, Rowan was arrested in Blackpool in 2022 after police used the location of his mobile phone to identify where he was.
Judge Emma Peters sentenced him to 12 years in prison with six years on licence.
Stuart Merry
Merry, of Norwich Road, Ipswich, admitted breaching a sexual harm prevention order made in 2020 which banned him from possessing or buying material about child sexual abuse.
The court heard that Merry had a number of previous convictions for offences including outraging public decency, gross indecency with a child, indecent assault of a girl under 14 and seven breaches of a sexual harm prevention order and had served several jail terms.
Sentencing him to two years, Judge Richard Kelly said Merry had deliberately withheld the books in question from staff and had hidden them because he knew he wasn’t allowed to have them.
Mark Wiggett
Wiggett was in a short relationship, which the victim described as “toxic”, and when she ended it he continued to send her emails “using every trick in the book to cause her as much distress as possible”, according to Judge Martyn Levett.
Wiggett sent malicious emails to the care home where the victim worked pretending to come from concerned relatives of those in care, alleging she smelt of cannabis.
He also made fake calls from the NSPCC informing her that her daughter was malnourished and neglected.
Wiggett has eight other convictions involving harassment stretching back to 2014 and as he was sentenced to 40 months in prison, he had his head in his hands.
He was also given concurrent sentences for possession of criminal property charges, converting criminal property, multiple criminal damage offences and transferring criminal property.
The criminal damage offences relate to Wright smashing the window of a business in Felixstowe in 2021.
He was also sentenced for further threats of violence made to individuals in the town.
Detective inspector James Cassedy said: “We are pleased to see a dangerous drug dealer removed from the streets of Felixstowe. Wright’s offending shows he has little regard for the law or for the property of others. He now has a lengthy sentence to consider his actions."
Altin Marku, Mariglen Markaj and Refik Shehi
On July 17, Marku was riding an electric bicycle through Ipswich when he was seen by police discarding a cigarette packet, which contained grip seal bags of cocaine.
On July 30, police stopped an Audi being driven by Shehi and Marku, who was a passenger, was found with £580 and a mobile phone, a bag of cocaine in his sock and a wallet containing a significant quantity of cash.
They gave an address in Chevallier Street in Ipswich where the rest of the drugs and money were found alongside a set of scales and grip seal bags.
Judge Wilson sentenced Shehi to 30 months imprisonment. Marku and Markaj were sentenced to 27 months, slightly lower in light of the fact they are younger.
He advised each of the defendants that due to the length of their sentences, they may face deportation upon release.
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