January 2016
Judge tells paedophile to confess to any of other children he abused
A PREDATORY paedophile who finally broke his silence of 15 years to confess to sexually assaulting a boy in the 1990s has been urged by a judge to own up if he had committed any similar crimes.
Terence Bolton left an eight-year-old boy to suffer “week in week out” after he refused to reveal the abuse when he was jailed in 1999 for gross indecency and indecent assault against three other boys, aged 12, 11 and six.
There was an outcry at the time against the “lenient” 42 month prison sentence he received at Bradford Crown Court, following his imprisonment in the 1970s for similar child sex offences.
Bolton, 68, of Springhead Road, Thornton, Bradford, walked out of court yesterday after he received a suspended prison sentence for a total of eight offences of indecent assault and gross indecency against the eight-year-old boy.
Prosecutor Kitty Taylor said Bolton, a retired care home caretaker, abused the child over a period of several months in 1998.
The abuse, including offences now charged as rape, stopped when he was arrested for sexually molesting the three boys. He befriended them over several years, taking them gardening, fishing and into the woods.
Bolton served fewer than two years behind bars and had kept out of the trouble since
Mrs Taylor said the latest offences came to light when Bolton’s victim, now aged 25, alerted the police early last year.
The young man, who suffers mental health problems, spent years mistakenly believing his mother knew what Bolton was doing to him, and even thought “money had changed hands”.
“He formed the view that because he was allowed to go with the defendant, she was compliant,” Mrs Taylor said.
Bolton, a grandfather, was arrested in February last year and at first admitted to touching the boy once in Peel Park, Bradford. He then confessed to repeatedly abusing him for between three and six months.
Bolton molested the little boy in his car and in a garden shed at his workplace.
He offered no information to the police about the offences when he was questioned in 1998.
Judge Colin Burn sentenced Bolton to 18 months imprisonment, suspended for two years, with a six month curfew order.
He is already signing on the sex offenders’ register for life and the judge made a Sexual Harm Prevention Order, also for life, banning Bolton from any unsupervised contact with children.
Judge Burn also urged Bolton to “bring to light any further matters” he was hiding.
He told Bolton: “The complainant has had to suffer, week in week out, because of what you did to him years ago.
“There’s no such thing as water under the bridge as far as offences of this nature are concerned.”
He added: “It would have been perfectly open to you to have volunteered that (this boy) was involved as well.”
In mitigation, Bolton’s lawyer, Andrew Walker, said it was “an exceptional case”.
He said Bolton had completed two sex offender treatment programmes, one in jail and another when he was released into a hostel in 2000.
“There is a success story here of punishment and rehabilitation,” Mr Walker said, conceding: “He was a predatory offender in those days.”
The court was also told that Bolton was in very poor health, walking with the aid of a stick and having lost the use of one hand.
“He is an elderly gentleman with a wealth of physical difficulties,” Mr Walker said.
Bolton told court staff he had difficulty standing and he leaned heavily on his stick in the courtroom.
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