August 2011

Sex offender lured boys to his Great Yarmouth home

A sex offender was jailed for three years after he was found guilty of sexually abusing three youngsters after luring them to his home in Great Yarmouth.

Anthony Hallam, who is already on the sex offenders’ register for previous matters, had denied five indecent assaults and another serious sexual offence involving three young boys while living in a house in Byron Road, Yarmouth, during the 1980s.

The matter only came to light after one of the alleged victims heard a radio programme which prompted him to come forward and make a complaint years later.

His action then led to his younger brother and a close friend to also step forward with their own allegations against Hallam.

Hallam, 59, who now lives in Nottingham, had denied ever sexually touching any of the boys but the jury at Norwich Crown Court took about 40 minutes to find him guilty of all the charges.

The jury heard that Hallam had previous convictions for similar matters in 1969 and 1971 and in 2005 he was jailed for six years for sexually assaulting a 13 year-old boy.

The court had also been told how Hallam is now suffering from ill health as he had been diagnosed as having cancer of the oesophagus, in 2009, and had to have chemotherapy.

Jailing him, and banning him from working with children, Judge Alasdair Darroch told him: “This is a particularly unpleasant case.”

He said that if these latest matters had come to light at the time of his last conviction he would have received a longer sentence and said that Hallam by his not guilty pleas had forced the three victims in the case to come forward to give evidence.

“You should never have put them through that.”