The "Sex Monster" Who Injected Teens in Genitals after Claiming They Had Chernobyl Radiation Poisoning
By Andrew Bardsley
A judge branded a former trainee church minister who injected teenagers in the genitals for his own ‘twisted’ gratification a ‘sexual monster’. John Beaumont, 58, was today sentenced to 13-and-a-half years in prison for the sexual abuse, which happened after he convinced his three victims that they may have suffered radiation poisoning following the Chernobyl disaster. In a victim impact statement, one of the victims said Beaumont can ‘rot in hell’. After being arrested, Beaumont continued to deny the abuse and branded the victims ‘liars’, saying they lived in ‘fantasy land’. Beaumont, a former minister in Scotland, told his victims that he was medically trained and had been instructed by the military to carry out medical examinations on them to test for radiation poisoning. He has two previous convictions in Scotland for injecting children with needles, a sentencing hearing at Manchester’s Minshull Street Crown Court heard. Police said that, during his most recent crimes, Beaumont used the syringes ‘under the guise of taking samples’ while it’s believed one victim was injected in the genitals with water.
Prosecuting, Michael Brady said two of the victims who were injected were minors when the offences started, aged between 16 and 18, and a third was an adult. He said the abuse took a particular form, in that hypodermic needles and tubes would be inserted into various parts of their body. Beaumont told them that they were on a secret list of people who may have been infected following the Chernobyl disaster, a nuclear catastrophe in Ukraine which has led to thousands of people contracting cancer. The victims said the examinations were embarrassing, frightening and painful. Beaumont told the victims the examinations were ‘top secret’, that they were ‘classified Ministry of Defence stuff’, ordering them not to tell anybody. His offending, which happened more than 20 years ago, caught up with him after the now-adult victims made statements to police. In an interview after being arrested in 2015, Beaumont denied the abuse and claimed his victims were ‘practised and competent liars’. He eventually admitted his guilt on the day of a proposed trial, pleading guilty to nine counts of indecent assault and one count of causing actual bodily harm.
In victim impact statements read out in court, one victim said: “He deserves to rot in hell as far as I’m concerned.” Another said: “What happened to me has never left my mind. Not for one moment.” They added: “I feel nothing but pity and contempt for him.” Another victim said they suffered post traumatic stress following the abuse, and said that Beaumont ‘scared’ them ‘beyond belief’. Defending, Virginia Hayton said that Beaumont had showed a ‘good side’, having cared for his elderly mother who is ill. The court heard that Beaumont has two previous convictions for similar offences in Scotland. In the late 1970s he sexually assaulted a number of boys and girls after posing as a doctor, a university researcher, a representative of a health board and a medical researcher. He was sentenced to a three year probation order, which Judge Paul Lawton described as ‘remarkable in terms of modern thinking’. Beaumont offended again in 1985, when working as an English tutor he told a 13-year-old boy he was a government employee, and needed to test for radiation before injecting him. Despite this, Beaumont only received his first custodial sentence today, when Judge Lawton passed an extended sentence and said he posed a significant risk of causing serious harm in the future.
Beaumont, of Byron Road, Greenmount, Bury, will serve a further two-and-a-half years on licence after serving his prison sentence, and will only be released if the parole board deems it safe to do so. Addressing Beaumont, who was emotionless while being sentenced, the judge said: “This was an elaborate and carefully planned deception by you to engineer situations that allowed you to commit this dreadful abuse.” The judge described Beaumont as a ‘sexual monster’ whose abuse took a ‘similar and sinister form’. He paid tribute to the resolve of his victims in helping bring Beaumont to justice. His partner, Susan Beaumont, 49, Holcombe Road, Greenmount, Bury, had been charged with aiding and abetting his offending and was due to stand trial. But the case against her was dropped after the crown said it was not in the public interest following John Beaumont’s guilty pleas.
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