THE York son of a retired North Yorkshire County Councillor was today jailed for 13 years for satisfying the perverted lusts of himself and his father.

Philip Nigel Coates, 46, of Ascot Way, Acomb, made life hell for two women by making them have sex with Raymond Coates, 76, Leeds Crown Court heard. The two men also got the younger of the two women to have sex with an animal.

Jailing him for 13 years, the honorary recorder of York, Judge Paul Hoffman, said: "I am satisfied you put these two women through sheer hell and not just for the period of offences. The consequences to them of these offences have been thoroughly traumatic.

"You did this to satisfy yours and your father's perverted lust and to secure material advantages from your father."

Minutes earlier a jury had unanimously convicted Philip Coates of three charges of procuring a woman to have sex with his father, one of attempted procurement and one of inciting a woman to commit a serious sex offence with an animal.

The judge said he regarded the offences as akin to rape and found it "extraordinary" that the maximum sentence for procurement was two years. He urged Parliament to change it.

During the trial the jury heard how, while Philip Coates was a corporal in the RAF police service, detectives investigated him on allegations that he forced a woman to be a prostitute and lived on the proceeds. Philip Coates denied the allegations under oath and there was no charge in the trial about it.

Raymond Coates, of Sawmills, Huby, was to have stood trial with his son on several sex allegations including inciting a woman to commit a sex act with an animal. But at the start of the trial his barrister, Philip Collier QC persuaded Judge Hoffman that he was unfit to stand trial because of his very poor mental and physical condition. The judge said that "with enormous reluctance, and I emphasise with enormous reluctance, because it is unsatisfactory that these very serious and nasty charges should remain unresolved, I am going to order a stay."

His decision meant that Raymond Coates does not have to face trial unless his health improves. He was neither acquitted nor convicted.

Mitigating for Philip Coates, Andrew Robertson QC said Raymond Coates seemed to have been the prime mover behind the animal sex offence.

Updated: 14:33 Friday, July 18, 2003