The NME is reporting that Lostprophets frontman Ian Watkins has been sentenced to 35 years in prison. The singer pleaded guilty last month to 13 sexual offenses, including two counts of attempted rape of a baby. This morning, Watkins was sentenced in Cardiff Crown Court in his homeland of Wales.
According to the NME, Watkins was given a prison term of 29 years and “an extended license of six years, and will have to serve two-thirds of his sentence before he can be considered for release.”
The NME has a lengthy breakdown of the court proceedings from Wales this morning.
During sentencing, Royce said that Watkins posed a “significant risk” to women and children and that he and his two female co-defendants had plumbed “new depths of depravity” and that the case was so extreme it “breaks new ground”. He told them: “Any decent person looking at or listening to material here would experience shock, revulsion, anger and incredulity.”
The report states that Watkins wanted to make a statement last month, and after long fits of denial, finally wanted to apologize for what had transpired. But at first, he described his ordeal as “megalolz.”
It was revealed that the frontman had made a phone call from prison after entering his guilty plea (November 26) in which he claimed he wanted to release a statement when he was sentenced saying: “It was megalolz, I don’t know what everyone is getting so freaked out about.”
In another phone call, he told a friend that “there was no medical evidence” and “nobody was harmed”, adding: “I’m not a paedophile, I’m not. You know I plead[ed] guilty just to avoid a trial, not realizing ‘Hang on, that makes me look a bit guilty’ but I would never harm anybody.” Asked whether he still thought the case was “megalolz”, meanwhile, he replied: “No, it’s just lols now.”
But Watkins’ QC Sally O’Neill said that the singer now wanted to apologize for his behaviour. “He does wish, for what it’s worth, to say he is very, very sorry for what’s happened and still finds it hard to accept but realizes the reality of what has happened,” she said.
Photo courtesy of South Wales Police