‘Odd’ couple hid a

THERE was often a van parked outside the well-kept but nondescript semi-detached house.

At night, at around 10pm, neighbours said it would often be driven off by Peter and Avril Griffiths.

Now those neighbours are left wondering what horrifying events took place later on those nights after the van’s owners were revealed as serial rapists so notorious they were dubbed “the Fred and Rose West” of their town.

Their house is on a long and welllooked-after street in Barry, made up largely of semi-detached houses which sell for somewhere in the region of £190,000.

But neighbours remember the slightly odd things that happened at the Griffiths house, where Avril could be seen fully naked in the upstairs window as she changed clothes.

They say they often saw police vans pull up outside the house. And on Monday night, in the back garden of the Griffiths’ house, just days before they were convicted of multiple rapes and sexual assaults, there was a fire.

“Heavens knows what they were burning,” says one neighbour.

None of this, however, was a sign of what the couple were actually doing. That was revealed in a Cardiff courtroom, where the couple were found guilty on Thursday of raping and indecently assaulting three young children.

Jurors heard Peter Griffiths used his “suggestible” wife Avril, who has a very low IQ, as bait to groom the children with alcohol and cigarettes between the 1970s and 1990s.

Prosecutor Caroline Rees QC told the court the couple took one of the girls “dogging” and would “have sex with her in the back of a van while others looked on”.

The court also heard one of the girls was taken on a boat in the Bristol Channel where she was raped by Peter Griffiths and that Avril Griffiths also allegedly sexually assaulted the girl on the boat. The girl later told police she had been “ripped apart physically” after suffering injuries.

One victim told how she was dressed up in short skirts and heels and taken in a van to car parks at Castell Coch and Porthkerry Park in Barry, where she would be raped by Mr Griffiths and other men. The pair denied all the charges. Two days after their convictions (they are yet to be sentenced, but have been warned by a judge they could be looking at life terms), people on Barry Road, the street where they used to live, were going about their mornings as normal.

Someone was making the most of the late summer sunshine and mowing their front lawn.

Another strolled back from the corner shop with the weekend papers tucked under their arm.

It could be just another Saturday morning. But behind closed doors, people are still reeling from the fact that, until two days ago, two child rapists were living among them.

Not that they were well liked. During the trial, one victim said: “I think if you ask most families in Barry, they’d hate them.”

The couple lived on Barry Road for 40 years. The people who lived around them don’t want to dwell on the stories of systematic abuse. But they did speak of their shock.

One resident said he was used to seeing a van parked up outside the Griffiths’ family home.

He said: “The van was always there, parked up [the van is not necessarily the same one in which sexual abuse took place]. They often used to drive off late at 10pm at night. Looking back now, perhaps we know why. It is only looking back that we have thought about it.

“There was always a boat outside too, which we used to see him working on. But it was all taken away last weekend.

“Over the years, we saw police vans parked up outside the house. We never knew why. But hearing what was said in court, it makes you wonder.”

At their trial, the court heard Peter and Avril Griffiths were a “sexuallydriven” couple who indulged in swinging, dogging, sexual photographs and homemade pornographic films.

It also heard about the boat, which