Police chief who won libel case guilty of abusing boys
A FORMER police superintendent who won £375,000 in libel damages after media accusations of involvement with paedophiles was yesterday found guilty of the historical sex abuse of boys.
Gordon Anglesea, 79, of Colwyn Bay, used his position and “connections with authority” to molest his two victims, Mold Crown Court was told.
Anglesea ran a Home Office centre in Wrexham in the 1980s where teenage boys convicted of petty crime would be given a “short, sharp, shock” of physical training, marches and parading. He was convicted yesterday of four counts of indecent assault and cleared of one count of buggery between 1982 and 1987, against two boys, both aged 14 or 15 at the time. Three of the assaults took place at the attendance centre, against one boy who was “last back to the showers”, the jury was told. Anglesea told the court he was the victim of a “conspiracy of lies” by bitter men.
The jury was told that Anglesea, whose defence was funded by the Police Federation, was accused of having “a connection” to members of a paedophile ring using children’s homes as cover for their abuse. Suspicions had first been raised in the media in 1991 when Anglesea was named as a regular visitor to children’s homes. He had resigned suddenly from his police job as questions about abuse in homes grew.
But in 1994 Anglesea won damages of £375,000 in a joint action against the Independent on Sunday, The Observer,
HTV and Private Eye.