“Disgusting waste of a human being”: Daughter of taxi driver rapist Raymond Shorten publishes final farewell letter to father in prison

The daughter of taxi driver-rapist Raymond Shorten today released a final farewell letter she wrote to her father in prison, calling him “a disgusting waste of a human being.”

Leah Mates, 19, wrote the letter over a four-year period while the father she thought she knew was under investigation for raping two women in his taxi in 2022 and raping a seven-year-old child in 2012.

The heartbroken teenager finally sent the message to Midlands Prison a few days ago. Leah told us exclusively: “I basically sent the letter as a suicide note after he was found guilty.

READ MORE: Serial rapist Raymond Shorten was convinced he would be found not guilty and return home to watch the Euros

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“He probably read it already and didn’t respond. I sent it because I knew I would never be able to hug him or do anything like that again and I felt like I needed to say goodbye.”

In the heartbreaking letter that Leah shared with this newspaper, she spoke of how she once looked up to her father, only to learn what a monster he really was.

She wrote: “I grew up looking up to you, seeing only the good in you, and defending you when you weren’t there. Even when you were mean to me or someone said something you didn’t like to me, I defended you.

“You just hurt everyone, you’re a ruiner, you ruin everyone and everything you touch or are around you and I will not let you do that to me again.”

Leah says she blocked her father in 2020 because of his increasingly horrific behavior toward her – only to be stunned to discover just two weeks later that he had been arrested for the rape and abuse of a child she knew.

She writes: “Two weeks ago I blocked you for being a terrible father, only to find out two weeks later what a horrible, disgusting human being you are. A pedophile? Seriously?”

“I didn’t think you could be any worse off. But that doesn’t surprise me. I’ve always had a bad feeling about you. Ever since that came out, I’ve had to change my life, and it’s all because of you.”

“You are a selfish, disgusting waste of a human heart, if you even want to call it a heart, because to me it isn’t. Someone with a heart would not rape and traumatize little children.

“Who. The. Hell. Does. This. It’s inhumane. You are inhumane. I’m trying so hard now to get through each day to recover from this.”

Leah, who knows the woman, now 20, who was raped on the day of her mother’s funeral and on another occasion in a Shorten home, told her father how traumatized she was by the incident.

She writes: “Even though you didn’t rape me, you traumatized me for life. And traumatized so many girls for life. How can you live with yourself? I will never understand this.

“I’m not the type to wish death on anyone, I really am not, but you, if you get away with not taking any responsibility for your behavior and your actions, you will, in my opinion, be the only person on this earth who deserves death more than anyone else.

“I can’t believe that there are kind, really sick people out there in this world who die while a vile human like you stays alive. You are the spawn of evil, the devil in its purest form in my eyes. You are everything that is disgusting, evil, ugly and horrible in this world, a world in which you don’t deserve to exist.”

Three years after she wrote these words, Leah added to the letter after her father was sentenced to 13 and 17 years in prison in two criminal trials, each to be served consecutively.

In the last part of the letter, she talks about how she has grown and healed – but says that she still cannot cope with his monstrous actions.

She writes: “Every day I think about how horrible you are for what you did to our family and the girls and I know I should probably say I regret those words I wrote three years ago as they may be the last I say to you but I don’t know what else to say because now that I’m more grown up and healed and have gone to court and gotten justice for the victim, I still wouldn’t change anything I wrote then.

“I just can’t say ‘I love you.’ I can’t say I miss you. I can’t say those sweet words that every child is supposed to say to their daddy.”

Leah told her father about her graduation and how she now takes care of her mother and “has let go of all the anger I felt four years ago.”

She adds: “I mourn you every day, the version of you that you showed me every week during our visits.

“I treated your loss like a death. I made an album with photos of us and wrote down some memories and I look at it when the grief is overwhelming. You know, I wonder how you can sleep. How do you cope with all this? Choosing this life, doing this to all these girls, how can you live with this?

“I still look for logic, even though your actions have never shown logic. Maybe that’s my madness. I look for something human in you after you’ve done inhuman things.”

The teen goes on to tell her father that this will probably be the last he hears from her and told us that she has no plans to ever speak to him again.

She adds: “I’m not going to keep updating you all about my life. I’m just going to move on without you, as much as it will hurt. That’s the way it has to be.”

“I can’t miss you and most of your actions as a parent because it only hurts me… I’m grieving for someone because there was once a time when you loved me. I was your baby. I was your princess. You were my hero…

“Between four years ago and now I have lost more than I ever wanted to, more than I could ever describe in a single letter, but I have also learned more than my heart deserves, and so, with love, goodbye.

“Even if you never see this letter, I said it, and I’m sure there will be more tears in the near future, but I’m still healing and learning to love the world you made me hate. Goodbye, Daddy.”

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