Sex abuser held an axe to boy’s fingers

A BUSINESSMAN has been jailed for ‘frightening and disgusting’ sexual attacks he carried out as a teenager against a nine-year-old boy.

Jason Winward, now 46, threatened to chop off the boy’s fingers with an axe if he told his parents about the abuse, a court heard.

Winward went on to set up and become manager of family-run printing company Pad Printers, which has a turnover of £1.5million and 25 employees. Police began a historic abuse investigation last year after the father of the victim discovered he had travelled to Winward’s £250,000 rural home in an attempt to confront his abuser.

It is not believed the confrontation took place. The victim, now 39, who suffers severe depression, told Manchester Minshull Street Crown Court he had been forced to perform sex acts on Winward, then 15, in a garden shed.

Winward, from Littleborough, Greater Manchester, denied all charges but was found guilty of six indecent assaults and one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm between 1986 and 1987.

Sentencing, Judge Bernadette Baxter told him: ‘You threatened him with an axe, placing his hand on the floor, bringing the axe down and telling him if he told his parents you would cut his fingers off.’ He was jailed for ten years and placed on the sex offenders register for life.