Bath Chronicle
November 29, 2011
http://www.thisisbath.co.uk/School-chaplain-Bath-jailed-sex-abuse-betrayal/story-13987101-detail/story.html
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| Leslie Carter |
A former school chaplain from Bath who carried out a string of sex assaults on six young pupils was jailed for three-and-a-half years yesterday.
Father Leslie Carter, 84, preyed on his victims, aged between eight and 13, over a period 20 years while working at private schools in the UK and South Africa.
The Anglican priest 'abused his position' by targeting the boys while he was alone with them in churches, Scout huts and his own home in school grounds.
Carter, who lived in a flat in Bathwick Street, had previously admitted nine charges, relating to three boys, at a hearing in September, after which three more victims came forward, Harrow Crown Court was told.
This week he pleaded guilty to a further nine indecent assaults and was given a three-and-a-half-year prison term – despite telling the court he has been diagnosed with bone cancer and may not have long to live. None of the incidents took place in Bath.
Judge Graham White told him: "It is difficult to imagine a greater betrayal of your holy orders or your pastoral position than these incidents."
Carter targeted his first victim, then aged, 12, while he was working as a priest and English teacher in Cape Town, South Africa.
He indecently assaulted him while taking a group of students on a boat trip to the UK in December 1957.
Carter laid the boy across his lap, pulled down his trousers and smacked his bottom after he caught his victim and a friend peering into the ship's female showers.
"It is the victim's recollection that the defendant was doing this for his own pleasure and excitement," said Justin Bearman, prosecuting.
Carter returned to the UK in 1962 and took up a job as chaplain at a school in London, six years later.
While working there between 1974 and 1977 he preyed on the remaining five victims by 'engineering situations when he was alone with them', the court was told.
The allegations only came to light in 2004, when his South African victim complained to police in the UK.
"This defendant preyed on young men, abused his position as a priest and school teacher and breached that trust in the most devastating way possible towards these three young men over an extensive period of time," said Mr Bearman.
Paul Cook, defending, said Carter was in frail health and had recently been diagnosed with bone cancer.
"He is a man with a limited life-expectancy," he told the judge.
He said the priest was 'thoroughly ashamed' of his actions, but claimed he had no recollection of any of them.
"In the last 34 years there has been no further harm," added Mr Cook.
"This is not a man who poses a risk to the public and this is not man from whom the public require protecting.
"It is right that some mercy should be shown when sentencing elderly defendants and bearing in mind how much longer they have to live."
But Judge Graham White told Carter an immediate prison sentence was inevitable for assaults he said had inflicted 'years of internal misery' on the victims.
Judge White said Carter's claim that he did not recall the assaults 'beggars belief'.
Carter admitted a total of 18 counts of indecent assault.
A further 12 indecent assault charges and two counts of rape were ordered to lie on the file.
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