REVULSION, anger and utter disbelief is the only way I can describe my
reaction to Ian Watkins’ confessions this week to child sex crimes.
Most distressing of all was realising that the last time I interviewed the
Lostprophets frontman he was secretly making plans for his most hideous
attack.
Just a few days after we spoke, he filmed himself committing sex acts on an
11-month-old baby boy in a hotel room in west London.
The attack had been carefully organised with the willing assistance of the
baby’s mother, a huge fan.
It took place in April last year, the day after his band’s last album,
Weapons, was released. I had interviewed him about the album, close to the
hotel he used for his crime.
I had even taken along a teenage fan to meet him.
Nineteen-year-old Lizzie Baker was a former student of mine who had plastered
her walls with posters of her rock idol since she was 11.
I had interviewed the Welshman for The Sun’s Something For The Weekend section
twice before.
He always came across as cocky and had a massive ego — but that is a given for
many rock stars.
On Tuesday, after Watkins admitted 13 sex offences including trying to rape
the baby boy and plotting to rape an infant girl — also with the backing of
that child’s mother — it was beyond shocking.
Friends in the music industry who I spoke with were also reeling.
One record label executive said: “It’s so much darker than anyone can ever
have imagined.”
Another added: “For him to confess to that evil — he must have been scared of
the details becoming public. It’s more horrific than you can imagine.”
His former tour manager, George Davison, wrote on Facebook: “You think you
know someone but you really don’t.”
For years, the stepson of a Baptist minister had talked up his passion for
being “clean” since his days growing up in a small Welsh town.
He gave up booze at the age of 16 and became a fervent follower of the punk
subculture genre “straight edge”, which shuns drugs, drink and cigarettes.
In one interview in 2000, three years after forming Lostprophets, he
explained: “When we were growing up, being straight edge was a total
reaction. We wanted to make something of ourselves.”
That kind of drive worked. Lostprophets became huge, selling 3.5million
albums.
Their third release, Liberation Transmission, went straight to No1 when it
came out in June 2006.
Two years later, rumours of Watkins’ true persona as a paedophile started
to leak out on the web.
Female fans who had met him wrote on message boards saying they had found
child abuse images on his computer.
They also claimed he had talked about having sex with animals and children.
Tragically, two fans who were also both mums were not put off by his
depraved tastes.
They are the two twisted mothers who idolised the rock star and were groomed
by Watkins to let him act out his sick paedophile fantasies on their babies.
All three were planning more sick sessions of abuse.
Prosecutors told Cardiff Crown Court this week that, following the initial
attacks, Watkins and the women exchanged emails about how they would not go
“easy” on the child next time.
He also sent a text to one of the young mothers saying: “If you belong to me,
so does your baby.” Another time he wrote to the baby girl’s mother saying
how he wanted to “cross the line”.
When she replied saying: “A summer of incest and child porn,” he wrote back:
“Hell yes baby”. And added: “The sooner we start training her the better.”
The two mothers, aged 21 and 24 — not named in court to protect the identity
of their children — were charged alongside Watkins.
All three will be sentenced next month. Watkins, 36, has been remanded in
custody.
The judge also heard other sick stories and harrowing child abuse. These
included his violent and degrading sex acts when he took the virginity of a
16-year-old fan in New York.
He now claims he cannot remember much of the abuse because he was high on
crystal meth — despite his drug-free past.
There was no sign of any such side of the beast in my interviews.
However, chillingly, in our talk as he plotted his attack last April, he did
jokingly refer to abuse of children by Catholic priests.
He was very eager to talk about a track about religion that he had written for
the new album, called Jesus Walks.
In what then seemed a strange rant, Watkins told me: “Religion can be such an
oppressive organisation. Catholicism is bonkers. It’s no condoms and ‘Don’t
worry about diseases then dude’ — and the age of consent in Vatican City is
certainly under 12.”
But it did not ring any alarm bells with me.
His family is equally shocked — especially his heartbroken mum Elaine Davies,
60, who had idolised him. Watkins boasted to The Sun: “My mum is just super
proud of me. She loves it.”
She had married his church minister stepfather John Davies, 53, when Ian was
eight, three years after the death of his dad. This week Mr Davies said:
“Ian was loved, cherished, encouraged and nurtured. We did our best.
“He was a normal, happy young lad who grew up in the Valleys in a loving
family which had no more problems than anybody else has.”
Meanwhile, my former student Lizzie Baker — who I took along to my last
interview with Watkins — told me yesterday of her fallen idol: “From the age
of 11 I followed that man across the country. He was my hero. He was my
life.
“But like every other fan I know, I have now ripped down all the posters and
smashed every CD I had of his.
“It feels like he has ruined my childhood too.”