Key Witness Was Abused in Malta While on Holiday
di-ve news
May 3, 2007
http://www.di-ve.com/dive/portal/portal.jhtml?id=276278&pid=23
Malta — An English parish priest has been jailed for five-and —a-half years for sexually abusing six boys, one of whom he told he loved and took him on a holiday to Malta.
The parish priest, Rev David Smith, aged 52 and vicar of the St. John the Evangelist in Clevedon, North Somerset, was accused of grooming and molesting young boys, all aged under 16, over a period of 30 years spanning from 1976 to 2005, during sleep-overs at the vicarage and during holidays abroad.
One of the abused boys, now an adult, was a choir boy and he told the court how he feared for his life after his parish priest sexually abused him at a vicarage. The witness recounted how he joined St John's church choir when he was eight or nine and became close friends with the priest, adding that the latter told him that he loved him and once took him to Malta on holiday.
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The boy also recounted how he had once gone to the vicarage to dog-sit for the priest and when he woke up after falling asleep on the sofa, he found the priest next to him and started touching him and masturbating him. While on holiday in Malta, the alleged victim also said that h had woken up one night to find the vicar in his bed touching him.
The boy added that he was terrified of being branded a liar if he exposed the abuse.
Rev Smith however denied all charges brought against him saying that all offences were a figment of someone's imagination.
The jury however found him unanimously guilty of 10 charges of indecent assault, one sexual assault of a child under 13 and one of sexual activities with a child under 16. The trial lasted two weeks and heard how two complainants had already expressed concerns to the Church over the priest in 1983 and in 2001.
In his sentence, the judge told the vicar that he was a father figure and a mentor to these boys and that one felt largely humiliated by the experience he added to their distress.
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