OF LIVING WITH SORDID SECRET FOR DECADES
of my earliest memories were of being out playing and coming in to find Julie crying after he had abused her, or of Julie helping me build a ladder so I could pee out the window when we had been locked in a room. Then I’d get a beating.
“I’ve lived with what happened my whole life and it still eats me up every day.
“I’m still ashamed and find it hard to talk about. He abused me when I was a boy and he was a man. I didn’t know how to cope with everything.”
On October 26, Gray was convicted of preying on the siblings between 1986 and 1997 at addresses in Port Glasgow.
He was found guilty of seriously sexually abusing Charles, locking him in rooms, punching, slapping and kicking him between 1986 and 1988, when he was aged between three and five.
Gray was convicted of raping Julie and abusing her in other vile ways between 1989 and 1998.
He was also found guilty of repeatedly punching and kicking her on the head and body and dragging her downstairs by her hair.
In addition, Gray was convicted of sexually assaulting a woman in August 1996.
Julie said: “Finally, after so long, we had justice. It was something we had waited so long for.
“He stole our childhoods. He made me live in fear. I’d go to bed and wrap myself tightly in the blankets and pray that I didn’t fall asleep in case he came in to abuse me.
“I can still lie awake at night, afraid to go to sleep.”
The siblings, who waived their right to anonymity, say their ordeal has been made much worse because they claim biological mother Rhona Gray, 52, is standing by her husband.
When approached by the Record, a family member said she did not want to comment.
Julie, a mother of five, added: “I’ll never understand anyone who would choose a man over their kids.
“As a mum, your job is to protect your kids – not neglect and abandon them. She didn’t protect us.
“I’d love to face Gray in prison and ask him how he feels now. But I’d also like to face my own mother and ask her how she can stand by him. She deserves to be locked up as well, in my opinion.”
Julie now wants to encourage other victims of sexual abuse to come forward and report their attackers to the authorities.
She said: “I want others to know that justice is possible. If something like this is happening or has happened, you need to come forward. There is help and support.”
Sentencing Gray, Judge Kenneth Maciver QC said the monster had shown a “total lack of remorse” for his appalling crimes.
He added: “You stand convicted of extremely serious crimes of sexually abusive conduct, physical assault, sexual assault, rape of a child and a serious sexual assault of an adult woman.”
The judge said Gray had abused Julie “terribly and repeatedly’.
He also said the pervert’s previous conviction in 2015 for possession of indecent images of youngster underlined the fact that Gray has a “sexual attraction to children”.
As well as his nine-year prison term, Gray was placed on the Sex Offenders Register indefinitely.