November 2013
Babysitter abused young boy
A pervert who bought a little boy’s silence with sweets after repeatedly sexually assaulting him has been warned to expect a long prison sentence.
Robert Cook, of Eldon Drive, Harraby, was in his late teens when he regularly abused the boy, who was aged between seven and nine.
He denied doing anything wrong but at the city’s Crown Court he was found guilty of four charges of indecent assault and three of incitement to commit gross indecency.
The court heard that some of the offences, committed in the late 1980s, would have amounted to rape under modern law.
Cook, who is now 39, was found not guilty of one further offence of incitement, which was alleged to have taken place in a different house from the others.
The jury took less than half an hour to reach its unanimous verdicts.
During a four-day trial the jury heard how Cook was babysitting the boy when he abused him in his living room, his bedroom and at the top of his stairs.
He gave the child sweets to ensure he did not tell anyone what he was doing.
Prosecuting barrister Tim Brennand told the court Cook committed the offences “to vent his sexual frustrations as he was emerging from puberty and adolescence”.
He said the boy had been so traumatised by what Cook did that he had suffered psychiatric problems ever since.
“He has been tormented over a period of years because of what happened to him as a child at this man’s hands,” he said.
The court heard the victim told no-one until he confided in a girlfriend six years ago.
She told the police, but they took no action because the victim had not himself made a formal complaint.
He told his mother in 2010, and though she confronted Cook about it, again no action was taken.
It was only last year that the police were called in by staff at the Carleton Clinic, where the victim was being treated for depression and other problems, the court heard.
After the verdicts, Cook, who had 153 previous convictions, though none for sex offences, was put on the sex offenders’ register, then remanded in custody for background reports.
He will be sentenced on December 19. Judge Paul Batty QC told him he had “devastated” his victim’s life, so a prison sentence “of some length” was inevitable.
“It will have to be custody – the only question is how long,” he said.
The judge told Cook: “The boy was of an age when he knew perfectly well that this was a very wrong thing to do.
“It was a course of conduct which had appalling consequences as far as your unfortunate victim is concerned.”
