A “wicked and unrepentant” paedophile died behind bars after his horrific past caught up with him.
Former soldier Roger Lee abused two girls in incidents nearly three decades apart.
An investigation found he died of “natural causes” and received adequate care from prison staff during his time in jail.
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Lee was sentenced to 11 and a half years in jail at Liverpool Crown Court in 2016.
Then 74, the court heard he tried to molest the first child in the 1980s, before raping and sexually assaulting the second youngster in the 2000s.
The pensioner, who served in the Army for 22 years, left his victims with severe psychological harm.
Jailing him, Judge Neil Flewitt, QC, said: “I recognise your best years are now behind you, but I cannot ignore the fact that while you were enjoying your life, your victims were struggling to deal with the consequences of what you had done to them.”
His first victim was 11 when she saw Lee watching pornography on TV.
He invited her to sit beside him and tried to make her perform a sex act on him, but she resisted his advances.
She told the court she was consumed by guilt about not speaking out at the time, because if she had, the second victim may not have been targeted.
The victim said: “The decision I made then will haunt me to the end of my life.”
Lee sexually assaulted his second victim when she was 12, after she too saw him watching porn.
He raped her before apologising for his behaviour, which Judge Flewitt said was “hollow and meaningless”.
He then assaulted the girl again on another occasion.
The victim told the court the abuse “destroyed her life” and she now feels “worthless”.
She suffered depression and underwent counselling, which led to her making a complaint to police.
Lee, from Burscough but then of Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, initially admitted only the rape.
He pleaded guilty to indecency with a child and sexually assaulting a child under the age of 13 on the day of a trial.
Jonathan Goodman, defending, said his client now fully accepted there were “no excuses” and was genuinely sorry.
However, Judge Flewitt said a pre-sentence report demonstrated his “complete failure to accept blame” and the harm he caused - displaying a “complete lack of remorse”.
The judge told Lee to sign on the Sex Offenders Register indefinitely and gave him an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
He said: “You are in my view both wicked and unrepentant.”
Lee was initially locked up in Walton before being transferred to HMP Risley, in Warrington, in 2018.
In 2020, tests at Clatterbridge and then Warrington Hospital led to the discovery he had cancer.
On May 5 of that year he was transferred to a hospice to receive end of life care and, on May 26, he died.
A coroner concluded he died after lung cancer spread to other parts of his body.
Following Lee’s death the Prison and Probation Ombudsman (PPO), which probes all prisoner deaths, launched an investigation.
Its findings were released this week.
The PPO concluded: “The clinical reviewer concluded that the care Mr Lee received at HMP Risley was of a good standard, and equivalent to that which he could have expected to receive in the community. She made no recommendations.
“We did not find any non-clinical issues of concern.”
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