UNITED KINGDOM
Crawley Observer
Harley Tamplin
ct.news@jpress.co.uk
Thursday 29 October 2015
A retired Church of England priest has been jailed for six and a half years after he was found guilty of sexual offences against four men.
Vickery House, 69, of Brighton Road, Handcross, was sentenced at the Old Bailey today (Thursday October 29) having been found guilty of five sexual offences on Tuesday (October 27) after a 12-day trial.
He was found guilty of two offences against a teenage boy in Devon in the 1970s, and three others against three men in East Sussex in the 1980s. He was cleared of three further counts.
He had pleaded not guilty to all eight counts.
Detective inspector Jez Prior of Sussex Police said: “This complex investigation began when we received information from the Church of England in May 2012, concerning one of the victims who he has been found guilty of assaulting. The others came forward during the investigation.
“The case was about power that House, who was a priest when all these offences were committed, exercised while he was responsible for ministering to their spiritual needs, and it was about opportunism, as he took advantage of situations in which to sexually assault them.
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