A retired Church of England priest found guilty of child sex abuse offences dating back more than 25 years has been jailed for 18 months.
A judge said there could be “no greater breach of trust than a man playing the role of a man of God” to use his position to abuse children, as he jailed Father Keith Wilkie Denford.
How nice it is to have a cuddle
Prosecutors said Denford, 78, used the respectability of the cassock to groom and abuse two boys over an 18-month period from when they were aged around 13.
On one occasion he got into a bath with one of the boys while aroused. On another he pressed himself up against a boy intimately with the words: “How nice it is to have a cuddle.”
But Denford, who was the vicar at St John the Evangelist Church in Burgess Hill, West Sussex, was found not guilty last month of abusing one of the boys aided by organist and choirmaster Michael Mytton, 69, in the back of Mytton’s Jaguar.
Denford and Mytton, known as Mark, had denied all the charges they faced.
Following a two-week trial at Hove Crown Court, Denford, of Broad Reach Mews, Shoreham-by-Sea, was found guilty of three counts of indecent assault against two boys between January 1987 and January 1990 and cleared of one count of the same charge.
Mytton, of South Road, East Chiltington, East Sussex, was cleared of one count of aiding and abetting indecent assault and cleared of two counts of indecent assault.
He was convicted of three counts of indecent assault relating to a third boy when the victim was in his early teens between September 1992 and September 1994.
Judge Paul Tain sentenced Mytton to nine months’ jail, suspended for two years, and made him subject to a sex offender programme and a two-year supervision order.
Judge Tain told Denford: “For the most part you led a blameless life but unfortunately you hid a dark secret which appears to have been that, probably when inebriated, you were unable, on this limited number of occasions, to prevent yourself from engaging in wholly inappropriate behaviour with young boys.” (AP)