February 2016: Wheatley has now been released. Living in York.

August 2011

Sex-abuse driver jailed for nine years

A COACH and lorry driver has been jailed for nine years after he abused children on trips.

Christopher George Wheatley, 48, involved four youngsters in a string of 15 sex crimes spread over more than a decade, York Crown Court heard.

Wheatley, now of Cromer Street, Clifton, had previously committed three serious sexual offences against a child.

He shook continually in the dock as Judge Michael Mettyear told him: “Your conduct towards these children was appalling and disgraceful.”

Wheatley pleaded guilty to one offence of attempted rape, one of sexual assault, four of sexual activity with a child, one of causing a child to engage in sexual activity, five offences of indecent assault, and three other sexual offences.

Nicholas Barker, prosecuting, said Wheatley’s latest offences began when he was working as a lorry driver in the 1990s.

He took a friend’s son, then aged nine or ten, with him on two overnight trips, and abused him when the pair lay down to sleep in the vehicle’s cab. He also bought the boy a present.

In the next decade he became a coach driver and committed a string of offences. They included taking a 12-year-old boy with him on a coach trip to Newcastle and abusing him after the passengers had disembarked; kissing a girl aged nine or ten sexually on a different coach trip and trying to rape her on another occasion, and abusing a second girl, aged eight to ten, in York. He knew all the children’s parents.

For Wheatley, James Bourne-Arton said he had tried to kill himself twice and understood the impact of his offences on the children. He suffered from ill-health.

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Acting Detective Chief Inspector Shaun Page, of York Police’s Protecting Vulnerable Persons Unit, said: “We are pleased with today’s sentence, which reflects the seriousness of the offences, and hope that it sends a clear message to those who betray the trust of children in the most sickening way, that justice will catch up them.

“We hope the outcome gives other victims of abuse the courage to come forward to the police and report their ordeals.”