January 2003

National lottery Jackpot prisoner to pay up

A NATIONAL Lottery winner yesterday won a cut in a 10 year jail term for sexually abusing six young children, but will still have to pay his victims £60,000 compensation out of his jackpot.

Steve Robert Maund, 43, of Coronation Road, Nelson, was jailed at Worcester Crown Court last July.

He pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting four young girls, indecently assaulting a boy and buggery of another boy.

The court heard the offences began in the 1970s in his hometown of Tenbury Wells.

London’s Criminal Appeal Court yesterday decided his jail term was ‘manifestly excessive’ and cut it to eight years.

But Mr Justice Sachs, sitting with Lord Justice Longmore and Mr Justice Davis, said orders to pay £10,000 compensation to each of his six victims and £847 towards prosecution costs would remain undisturbed.

“He has been fortunate to receive a windfall in the Lottery and that enabled him to meet the compensation orders,” said Mr Justice Sachs.

In ordering Maund to pay compensation to his victims for the ‘filthy experiences’ they had been forced to endure, the sentencing judge noted he had £100,000 left of his £300,000 winnings.

Mr Justice Sachs said the ‘squalid facts’ revealed Maund’s abuse of children in the 1970s and 1980s.

“In each case he told them that it would be their secret — this is a customary statement made by abusers,” he said.

He referred to the sentencing judge’s comment that Maund had done untold damage and injury to his victims, which had inevitably affected their daily lives.

Mr Justice Sachs said this was richly confirmed by reading statements made by the victims. Maund was of pervious good character.

In cutting the sentence, Mr Justice Sachs said one could not dispute the gravity of Maund’s behaviour, but 10 years was ‘manifestly excessive,’ particularly when taking into account the guilty pleas.