'coward' |
Some of the details in this horrific case are hard to read...
Ex-scout leader found guilty of child sexual offences after 27 years on run
Daragh Keany
Today at 10:22
A paedophile who stole a terminally ill man's identity and spent almost three decades on the run has been convicted of 54 child sex abuse charges.
Richard Burrows "acted like a coward and fled the country" leaving his victims to suffer, police said after he was convicted at Chester Crown Court.
During his trial this year, the court was told he had abused boys as young as nine while a housemaster at a Cheshire boarding school and as a scout master in the West Midlands between the late 1960s and mid-1990s.
He had previously admitted 43 out of 105 charges. The prosecution did not offer evidence for eight counts and he had denied the remaining 54 but was found guilty of all of them. Burrows, 80, formerly of Birmingham, will now be sentenced on April 7.
He was arrested at Heathrow Airport last year after almost three decades on the run, having failed to appear at his originally scheduled trial over alleged child sex offences at the same court in 1997.
The court heard how between 1968 and 1995, Burrows systematically abused 24 young boys across the Cheshire, West Midlands and West Mercia areas.
Allegations against Burrows partly related to his time as a housemaster at Danesford School in Congleton, Cheshire, between 1969 and 1971. The school has since closed.
Police said the abuse would often take place in toilets at night when he would wake boys on the pretence that he wanted to stop them wetting the bed.
The jury heard one of his accusers told police he "hated" the abuse, which would happen as much as two to three times per week, but said he "could do nothing about it", adding "I was frightened and young".
The court was told the boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, "did not think he would be believed" if he reported the abuse.