UNITED KINGDOM
BBC News
Disgraced clergyman Canon Gordon Rideout was a serial sex offender who preyed on young children across the south of England – but he could have been stopped more than 40 years ago.
Rideout, now 74, was convicted at Lewes Crown Court earlier of two attempted rapes and 34 indecent assaults on 16 boys and girls in Hampshire and Sussex in the 1960s and 1970s.
The jury heard many of his victims were too afraid to report his behaviour for fear of being beaten.
And he was one of several priests to whose alleged misdeeds the Church of England turned a blind eye.
In the 1970s he got as far as court but was cleared by a military hearing of allegations of indecent assault relating to his time as forces chaplain at St Michael’s Church on a military base in Middle Wallop, Hampshir
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