The women behind a fugitive rapist’s downfall

Jade Skea was a teenager when she first met charismatic street trader Kim Avis. She did not know it would bring her into a decade-long, controlling and abusive relationship with him and land her at the centre of a story that involved a fake death plot, an international manhunt and a high court trial.

This is the first time Jade has told her story about how she and others brought Kim Avis to justice.

For Jade it began in the early 2000s when Avis had a jewellery stall in the heart of Inverness which she used to visit with friends.

Jade says he was well-known in the town for his charity fundraising - including ambitious swims of Loch Ness - and was regularly featured in the local press.

"It was almost like he was a local sort of celebrity," she says.

Jade Skea

Jade was 18 when she began regularly seeing Avis, who was in his 40s

By the time she was 18, Jade was regularly seeing Avis, who was in his 40s.

"He wasn’t like other adults," Jade remembers. "We kind of felt like he was one of us."

As their relationship got more serious, Avis isolated her from family and friends and moved her into a static caravan outside Inverness, which no-one visited but him.

"Looking back now, I know that part of the plan was to just have me cut-off from everything," she says.

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Before long, Jade would begin to see the other side of Avis.

"He came to visit me one night, and he was just acting quite erratically, and he was upset about something," she says.

"He got on top of a picnic table that was outside the caravan, and he started howling, and just making bizarre animal noises."

Jade says that after this, Avis raped her for the first time.

Avis would subject Jade to a campaign of physical violence and abuse. He would go on to rape her again at his house known as the "Wolves’ Den".

"I remember just feeling like that was just kind of the end, this was going to be my life forever," Jade says.

Robin Gillanders

Avis had a jewellery stall in the heart of Inverness

In 2015, after years of violence, Jade decided to take action.

"He never thought that I would ever report him to the police," she says.

"I don’t think that he thought that I had that in me. He was probably quite shocked."

And Jade wasn’t alone.

Three other women had come forward to tell their stories of how Avis had raped and abused them over decades. Two of them were children at the time of the abuse.

"When other people came forward, at that point it’s just completely unravelling for him," Jade says.

Avis appeared in court charged with multiple rapes and sexual assaults against four women. He was released on bail and a trial date was set for March 2019.

The problem was, he wouldn’t be there.

Kim Avis had quickly sold his Wolves’ Den property for £245,000, bought a plane ticket and arrived at Monastery Beach, Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.