By Grâçia Ada Obi
A child sex predator who was jailed for 24 years for his acts of horror has died in prison.
Paedophile Thomas Reay was jailed for his crimes against two children as young as five in 2024. Reay was 66 and already had cancer when he was jailed and was “resigned to dying in prison.”
The paedophile, from Fenham in Newcastle, United Kingdom (UK), admitted to 16 child sex offences, including raping one child and attempting to rape another.
Last year, his victims told the court that he had ruined their lives when he carried out the sickening abuse over a number of years.
His offending came to light in May 2024, when his victims found the courage to report the offending to a loved one. Reay later told police he did not deny the allegations, but would make no further comment. A judge said at the time he was jailed that Reay had hoped to keep his “evil secret safe”.
After being jailed, Reay was serving his sentence at HMP Holme House in Teesside. But on July 9, this year, just a few months into his lengthy sentence – he died behind bars at the age of 67 from bowel cancer.
Following his death, an investigation was launched by the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO), which found the care he received was of a good standard and was equivalent to that which he could have expected to receive in the community. A recently published PPO report said: “The healthcare team responded promptly and proactively to Mr Reay’s needs. [The clinical reviewer] commended healthcare staff for sitting with Mr Reay as he was dying.
“A prisoner wrote to the PPO investigator praising healthcare staff at Holme House who sat with and comforted Mr Reay at every opportunity. He also commended prison staff who allowed Mr Reay’s fellow prisoners to sit with him to distract and comfort him during his final days.”
The PPO did not find any non-clinical issues of concern, and no recommendations were made. At an inquest, held in December, the coroner concluded that Reay died from natural causes.
After Reay was jailed for 25 years, Detective Constable Paul Armstrong, of Northumbria Police, said Reay “subjected the victims in this case to horrific ordeals over the course of a number of years” and branded him a “vile predator who stripped his victims of their childhood innocence through repeated abuse”.
