'Disgusting waste of a human': Daughter of taxi driver rapist Raymond Shorten posts final goodbye letter to father in prison
Leah Mates, 19, penned the letter over four years, while the dad she thought she knew was under investigation for raping two women in his taxi in 2022 and for raping a seven-year-old child in 2012
A daughter of taxi driver rapist Raymond Shorten today reveals a final goodbye letter she sent to her father in prison – calling him “a disgusting waste of a human”.
Leah Mates, 19, penned the letter over four years, while the dad she thought she knew was under investigation for raping two women in his taxi in 2022 and for raping a seven-year-old child in 2012.
The heartbroken teen finally posted the message to the Midlands Prison in recent days. Leah exclusively told us: “I sent the letter basically saying goodbye after he was found guilty.
READ MORE: Ex-fiancé of 'monster' taxi driver Raymond Shorten claims he raped her multiple times
“He has probably read it by now and he hasn’t responded. I sent it because I knew I would never be able to hug him again or anything like that, and I felt I needed my goodbye.”
In the heart-wrenching letter, which Leah showed to this paper, she spoke of how she once looked up to her father, only to learn of the monster he truly was.
She wrote: “I grew up looking up to you, seeing only the good in you, defending you when you weren’t around, even if you were horrible to me or someone said something they didn’t like that you said to me- I defended you.
“You just hurt everyone, you are a ruiner, you ruin everyone and everything that you touch or exist around and I won’t let you do that to me anymore.”
Leah says she blocked her father in 2020 over his increasingly horrible behaviour to her – only to be stunned just two weeks later that he had been arrested over the rape and abuse of a child known to her.
She writes: “The two weeks prior I blocked you for being a horrible father to only find out two weeks later how much of a horrible disgusting human being that you are. A paedophile? Seriously?
“I didn’t think you could have gotten worse. But I’m not surprised. I always had a bad feeling about you. Ever since that came out I’ve had to change my life all because of you.”
"You are a selfish, disgusting waste of a human heart if that’s what you want to call a heart because to me it’s not, someone who had a heart would not rape and traumatise little children.
“Who. The. F*ck. Does. That. It’s inhumane. You are inhumane. I try so hard to get through each day now to heal from this.”
Leah, who knows the now 20-year-old woman who was raped by Shorten on the day of her mother’s funeral, and on another occasion in a house, told her father how the incident has traumatised her.
She writes: “Even though you didn’t rape me, you traumatised me for life. And traumatised so many girls for life. How can you live with yourself? I will never understand that
“I am not one to wish death upon anyone, I’m really not but you, if you get away with not taking any responsibility for your behaviour and actions, you will be the only one on this earth who I think deserves death more than anyone.
“I can’t believe there’s kind, genuinely ill people out there in this world dying, while a vile person like you gets to live. You are the spawn of evil, the devil in his purest form in my eyes. You are everything that is disgusting, evil, ugly and horrible in this world, a world that you do not deserve to exist in.”
Three years after writing those words Leah says she added to the letter after two criminal trials saw her father jailed for 13 years and 17 years – to be served consecutively.
In the latter part of the letter she speaks of having grown and healed – but says she still cannot come to terms with his monstrous actions.
She writes: “Every day I think of how horrid you are for what you did to our family and to them girls and I know I should probably say that I regret those words I wrote three years ago since they may be the last I ever say to you, but I don’t know what else I would even say, because now that I’ve grown more, and healed, been through court and got the victim justice I still wouldn’t change anything I wrote back then.
“I just can’t say ‘I love you,’ I can’t say that I miss you, I can’t say those sweet words that every child is supposed to say to her Daddy.”
Leah told her dad about finishing school 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 every day for you, the version of you that you offered me every week on our visits anyways.
“I’ve treated losing you like a death, I made an album of photos of us and wrote down some memories and I look over it when the grief is overwhelming. You know, I wonder how do you sleep? How are you okay with all of this? Choosing that life, doing that to all them girl, how can you live with that?
“I am still seeking for logic when your actions have never showed logic. Maybe this is my insanity. Searching for something human in you after you did inhumane things.”
The teen goes on to tell her father this will probably be the last he hears of her, and told us she has no plans to ever speak to him again.
She adds: “I won’t keep updating you on my life. I’m gonna just go on without you as much as that’s gonna hurt. It’s how it has to be.
“I can’t miss you and most of your actions as a parent though because it only hurt me... I am mourning someone, that there was once a time where you loved me. I was your baby. I was your princess. You were my hero...
“I lost more than I ever wanted between four years ago and now, more than I could ever list out in just a letter but I also learned more than my heart deserved and so with love, goodbye.
“Even if you never see this letter, I said it, and I’m sure there will still be more tears over the next while but I’m still healing and learning to love the world you made me hate. Goodbye Dad.”
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