A tech multi-millionaire who was awarded an MBE for services to the digital economy has been convicted of drugging and raping two women in the early 1990s.
Lawrence Jones has already been behind bars for 10 months after he was previously convicted of sexually assaulting an ex-employee in an separate trial.
The 55-year-old was remanded in custody after a jury at Manchester Crown Court found him guilty in January – but reporting restrictions were only lifted today following the conclusion of the latest trial.
Jones and his wife Gail created the web hosting provider UKFast from their spare bedroom in September 1999, and the company went on to work with clients including the NHS and the Ministry of Defence.
In January 2019, an ex-employee called police to accuse him of forcing himself on her to have sex in 2010, among a string of other allegations.
Afterwards, a second woman said she had been sexually assaulted by Jones at a hotel during a business trip in 2013.
Prosecutor Eloise Marshall KC told the jury at Jones’s first trial that the woman discovered her room was part of a penthouse suite that connected to the defendant’s bedroom.
The pair had drinks at the bar before returning to the room, Ms Marshall said, and Jones became ‘more persistent’ in his approaches ‘despite her clear resistance’.
She continued: ‘He put his arm around her and started dragging her in towards him. He ignored (the complainant) repeatedly who was clearly telling him that she did not want to engage in this sort of behaviour.
‘Things escalated and he started asking: “Let me see your knickers”. As he said that he placed his hands on her body, on her legs and became quite forceful trying to prise her legs apart, with his hands on the inside of her thighs.
‘This caused her dress to ride up and as she was trying to pull it down and get away, he was trying to get on top of her.’
She managed to escape into her own room and locked the door behind her, the prosecutor said.
The woman later left the company after Jones ‘paid for her silence’ with a £13,000 settlement that required her to sign an NDA (non-disclosure agreement), Ms Marshall added.
Giving evidence, Jones told the prosecutor: ‘I put my hands on people’s shoulders but only people I thought I had a really good relationship with. There’s nothing sexual about what I was doing.
‘I gave hugs to people, that’s the sort of person I am.’
He said the woman in question was ‘flirtatious’ as she ‘quickly became drunk’ at the bar.
Jones was cleared of the allegations made by the first complainant in January 2019: one count of rape and three counts of sexual assault.
At the second trial this month, Jones denied attacking two women at the flat where he lived in Salford in the 1990s.
The women had come forward to the police separately in 2021 and 2022, and did not know each other.
One described being given something to sniff which had an ‘immediate impact’ on her, while the other said she had been overly affected by a glass of wine and what she thought was cannabis.
Ms Marshall told jurors: ‘Both women were stupefied and left partially conscious but unable to react.
‘Such was the effect of the drugs that the women, even then, were unclear about what drug had been used and exactly what had happened to them.’
Mrs Jones, who attended every day of the two trials to support her husband, held her hand over her mouth as the jury foreman delivered the unanimous verdict after four hours of deliberations.
Jones will be sentenced for all the cases on December 1.
Isla Chilton, senior district crown prosecutor for CPS North West’s rape and serious sexual offence unit, said: ‘Jones raped two women with no thought for how his actions would affect them.
‘By denying the offences, he compounded the harm to the women, attempting to evade responsibility for his actions. The jury saw through his lies and found him guilty.
‘I would like to thank the victims for supporting this prosecution and I hope this case will encourage others to seek justice. It’s never too late.’
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