A JUDGE urged ministers to reconsider plans to liberalise gambling yesterday as he jailed a violent serial mugger who robbed to fund his betting shop addiction.

Junior Easy, 38, was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for attacks on lone women as they walked to or from railway stations.

Although few of his victims tried to resist, Easy — who is 6ft 3in — punched them repeatedly or smashed their heads against the ground until they lost consciousness.

Janet Rayment, 56, a museum manager, was struck so hard and so often that her nose, cheek bones and eye sockets shattered, causing the roof of her mouth to collapse. Surgeons spent five hours repairing the damage and rebuilding her face.

Immediately after each robbery Easy took his victims’ cash to a bookmaker’s shop or greyhound track where he gambled every penny.

He admitted seven robberies and asked for ten others — all committed in South London between May and August this year — to be taken into account.

Judge Derek Inman, sitting at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court, told Easy that the horrific injuries he inflicted on his victims were inexcusable.

The judge said that politicians might take the case into account in debates on the Gambling Bill, which is currently before Parliament. He said: “It is not my position or my job to comment on recent proposals to extend the access to gambling facilities, but this is the sort of case those people who have ultimate responsibility for such decisions may like to consider.”

The judge said that Easy, who has a previous conviction for robbery and indecent assault, was “a severe danger to women in public places”.

He added: “Your problem seems to have been your addiction to gambling, which I accept drove you to commit these offences.”

Police believe that Easy, from Rotherhithe, South London, was responsible for many more muggings than those he admitted.

He used extreme violence, creeping up behind his victims near stations late at night or early in the morning.

Ms Rayment, who watched from the public gallery as Easy was sentenced, said she felt lucky to be alive. “When it first happened I wanted to die and actually wished he had killed me because I was suffering so much,” she said.

Easy robbed her of £55 in cash, a mobile phone and bank cards as she walked to South Bermondsey railway station to travel home to Chislehurst, Kent, after visiting her mother.

Ms Rayment said she would have liked Easy to have received a longer jail sentence.

She added: “He will come out in seven years and I am sure he will do it all again. He is completely addicted to gambling. That is not going to go away.”

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