On-the-run child abuser starts 21-year sentence

A PAEDOPHILE who went on the run for nine days after he was convicted of historical sexual abuse is starting a 21-year jail sentence.

John Gilbert Blacktop, 81, of Morecambe, Lancashire, was sentenced in his absence last month after he failed to attend Bradford Crown Court where a jury had earlier convicted him of 33 counts of indecent assault, one count of rape and one count of attempted rape. The abuse was committed in Lancaster and Stocktonon-Tees in Cleveland during the 1960s and 1970s and involved five girls aged between five and 14 at the time, said Lancashire Police.

Blacktop was formerly a choirmaster and church organist at Christ Church, Wyresdale Road in Lancaster, where some of the abuse occurred between 1974 and 1977.

He was reportedly sighted in Blackpool and Cleveleys after he failed to attend court in Bradford and eventually handed himself in at Blackpool Police Station on April 8.

Blacktop, of Marine Road West, received a six-month jail term for failing to surrender, which will run concurrently to his 21-year sentence for the sexual offences.

He was arrested and charged in 2016 after a cold case review by Lancashire Police’s Operation Fervent team, a unit set up in January 2015 to investigate the historical sexual abuse of children.

Andy Woodmass, of Operation Fervent, said: “John Blacktop is a predatory sex offender who preyed on young girls to satisfy his own depraved sexual desires.

“What is all the more sinister is how he targeted these youngsters and groomed them before carrying out his abuse, which in some cases was committed over a number of years. I would like to thank the jury for their careful consideration of this case, as well as the Crown Prosecution Service and counsel.

“I would like to give special mention to the victims who had the strength to come forward and report what had happened to them.

“They have behaved with dignity throughout this investigation.”