Jail sentence for nuisance caller

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Ian Parry's calls were described by the judge as a form of sadism

A man who made more than a 100 abusive and threatening calls mainly to women has been jailed for four years.

Ian Parry, 48, of Bacup, Lancashire, told some of his victims they would be abducted and assaulted if they did not repeat obscene phrases over the phone.

He targeted women after reading about them in newspaper articles, getting their details from the phone directory.

Parry, who admitted eight counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, was sentenced at Burnley Crown Court.

He also asked for 96 other offences involving nuisance calls to be taken into consideration.

The father-of-three, of Pennine Road, made more than 100 calls from public phone boxes in east Lancashire and north Manchester between September 2006 and August 2007.

There was a substantial element of verbal sadism and demeaning and humiliating behaviour in obtaining power over your victims Judge Simon Newell

Eight of the calls were so serious the psychiatric harm they inflicted were deemed to have caused actual bodily harm to the recipients.

In one instance, Parry ordered a 16-year-old boy to wear his mother's underwear after he claimed he had abducted her and had her gagged and tied up to a bed.

He was caught in Rochdale in August last year following a joint surveillance operation between police and BT security.

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.

'Obscene threats'

"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."

A spokesman for BT said it was one of the worst cases of abusive calls it had ever seen.