A RUGBY pensioner’s has been jailed for the sexual abuse of a young boy in the 1990s.
Ronald Brown’s victim eventually went to the police after the incidents had preyed on his mind in the intervening years.
And at Warwick Crown Court the 69-year-old, of Grendon Road, was jailed for three-and-a-half years and ordered to register as a sex offender for life.
He had been found guilty following a trial of two charges of indecent assault and one of gross indecency with the boy, after which the case was adjourned for a pre-sentence report to be prepared on him.
During the trial the victim said he had to go to Brown’s then Rugby home in Freemantle Road to borrow a pair of secateurs for his mother, who was doing some gardening.
In the house he was given a drink of juice, and sat on the sofa in the living room while Brown went to get the secateurs from the garden shed.
When he came back in, Brown put them by the front door and sat next to the boy, who was under 14 at the time, and touched him sexually over his shorts.
Brown’s victim said: “He questioned me about whether I was going to tell my mum and my dad. I told him I wouldn’t say a thing to anybody. I was scared.”
The jury had heard there had been an earlier incident, also at Brown’s home, when Brown had touched him intimately and had taken the boy’s hand to get the boy to touch him.
Brown denied either incident had taken place.
At the resumed hearing Brown’s barrister Marcus Harry said Brown had been “a hard-working man” and had health problems, having suffered from angina for a number of years, as well as type two diabetes and osteoarthritis in his neck.
But Mr Harry said what was of more concern to Brown was his wife’s health problems, including an eye problem for which he takes her to appointments to have injections every six weeks, and arthritis in her knees.
Jailing Brown, Judge Peter Cooke told him: “What you did was wicked.
“You are a man of 69, previously outwardly of good, even impeccable character, but you were a man with a dark secret, which remained secret largely because you procured your victim’s silence.
“I accept you are in poor health, and that your wife is in poor health, and you will therefore find the inevitable custodial sentence more difficult than most.”
