April 2016

Serial paedophile who escaped justice for nearly fifty years facing prospect of dying behind bars

u

A serial paedophile who escaped justice for nearly fifty years is now facing the prospect of dying behind bars.

Retired police worker Bernard Fisher, 85, who has prostate cancer, has been jailed for eleven years for sex crimes against girls as young as eight in east Manchester between 1970 to 1991.

Fisher, of Windsor Road, Denton , originally denied revelations from eight adult women that he had molested them in childhood.

But as the sentencing judge described it, ‘forty years of guilt and self-deception came crashing in’ on him after seeing a video interview from the second complainant in his Manchester Crown Court trial.

After seeing her describe how he had cruelly betrayed her trust, and the hate campaign her family suffered in their community after reporting his abuse of her and her sister in the late eighties, he pleaded guilty to 23 sex assaults and one attempted rape.

The jury had heard that in the 1980s the complaints came to nothing, and Fisher went on to claim yet another victim.

In 2013 and 2014 all the victims, many of whom had revealed their ordeals to others over the years, found the strength to seek justice and Fisher was finally charged. He claimed the women were making it up until the third day of his trial.

Sending him down, Judge Martin Rudland said: “These offences involved the prolonged and systematic sexual abuse of young children who liked and trusted you. There can be no doubt that several, if not all of your victims struggle, even today, to come to terms with what you did to them. It can only be hoped your acknowledgment of guilt is better late than not at all. It’s a sad fact that you may not survive to be at liberty ever again.”

April 2016

Retired police worker, 85, admits child-sex attacks

BF

A retired police worker is facing a jail sentence at the age of 85 after admitting 24 sex offences against young children over a twenty year period.

Bernard Fisher went on trial at Manchester Crown Court after eight girls told how he molested them between 1970 and 1991 – when they were girls as young as eight.

The jury sat through two days of evidence before Fisher decided to plead guilty to 19 counts of indecent assault, four charges of indecency with a child, and one charge of attempted rape on Friday afternoon.

He had faced six rape charges, but they are not going to be pursued in light of his pleas.

Fisher, of Windsor Road, Denton, preyed on his victims while living in east Manchester between 1970 and 1991. He was reported to police in the late eighties, but carried on abusing girls after the case was not pursued against him.

Before retirement Fisher worked in police stores at GMP’s Chester House headquarters, and at Grey Mare Lane station in Beswck.

He was also an amateur football referee for Manchester Boys’ Federation League, Manchester Amateur League, and the Gorton League.

He attacked victims at locations including buses, a cemetery, secluded beauty spots, and at his former family home at Thomson Street, Gorton.

In a police interview played to the jury in his trial, one of the victims said her family reported him to police after her mother learnt allegations that she and two other little girls had been abused.

But the complaint was not pursued against Mr Fisher at the time – the late 1980s – and she and her family faced a hate campaign from people loyal to him.

The complainant, now a mother, said she was ‘annoyed’ at having to repeat her ordeal to police years later.

“He should have been arrested”, she said. “He should not have been allowed to walk the streets. It should have been dealt with by the police at the time, by whatever means they had. It’s been buried for twenty-odd years and I shouldn’t have to be doing it again – I feel like a child.

“Because we weren’t believed in the first place, because of the time that’s gone by, I haven’t got a lot to give. Apart from the fact I know he touched me inappropriately and I felt uncomfortable. He was nice about it, that was the creepy thing. He was like ‘you’re safe here with me’. He was smiling. But you know what’s going on was not nice.”

Fisher will be sentenced later this month.