January 2013

Jail for Rugby pensioner who abused boy, 7

A wheelchair-using pensioner has been jailed for enticing a seven-year-old boy into his home and sexually abusing him almost 30 years ago.

Peter Blake, of Railway Terrace, Rugby, at the time, was sentenced at Warwick Crown Court to seven-and-a-half months in prison.

Prosecutor Iain Willis said that in the summer of 1983 a seven-year-old boy was playing with friends in a park by Rugby cattle market when Blake, who was then 37, began talking to him.

Blake persuaded the boy to go with him to his home in nearby Railway Terrace where he took the youngster into his bedroom and showed him a pornographic magazine 

Blake threatened that he would be in trouble if his parents found out he had been looking at the magazine, before sexually assaulting the boy.

Judge Richard Griffith-Jones observed that there was a statement from the victim, now in his mid-30s, detailing the ‘shocking effect’ the incident has had on him over the years.

Mr Willis added that in 1986 Blake was jailed for 12 months for sexually abusing a nine-year-old boy.

Harry Ahuja, defending, said Blake, who appeared in court in a wheelchair, has had problems with his health for 20 or 30 years and underwent an MRI scan on New Year’s Eve.

Mr Ahuja said Blake’s eyesight and movement were deteriorating, leaving him almost housebound.

He had been receiving an Army pension since he was discharged in the 1980s – and if he was jailed his wife and 16-year-old son, who still lives at home, would be in difficulty because the payments on which they rely would stop while he was in prison.

Blake, 66, now of Hillside Grove, Taunton, Somerset, was said to have “memory issues” and to have no recollection of the incident.

But jailing Blake and ordering him to register as a sex offender for ten years, Judge Richard Griffith-Jones told him: “You are aged 66, and it is only fair I should make the assumption you are substantially disabled.

I’ve had to ask myself what is the point of sending a 66-year-old man in poor health to prison, even for a short time.

“But I have found myself quite unable to avoid the conclusion that there is a point to it. The point is that this was a particularly wicked offence. The courts have a duty to protect young children, and I would be failing in my duty if I did not pass an immediate custodial sentence.”