Former Police Chief Guilty of Child Sex Abuse

A former north Wales police chief has been found guilty of historical child sex offences.

Gordon Anglesea, 79, from Old Colwyn, was convicted of one charge of indecent assault against one boy, and three charges of indecent assault against another.

Anglesea, a former superintendent in the Wrexham area, had denied the charges, with his defence funded by the Police Federation.

He was arrested in 2013 as part of the National Crime Agency’s Operation Pallial investigation into historical abuse across north Wales.

The offences took place between 1982 and 1987, when both boys were aged 14 or 15.

The prosecution said both victims had been left “damaged” by the abuse and led “chaotic” lives of crime and drug and alcohol addiction.

The court heard how he subjected juvenile offenders to a military-style, “short, sharp shock” regime of physical exercise, drill parades and woodwork classes on Saturday afternoons.

Anglesea was “answerable to no-one” at the centre and would “inspect” the parade, make the youngsters do naked sit-ups and squat thrusts, then loiter around the showers “with a smirk on his face”.

One boy was abused in the showers of a Home Office attendance centre in Wrexham run by Anglesea, who was a police inspector at the time.

His second victim was initially sexually assaulted by convicted paedophile John Allen, while living at the Bryn Alyn children’s home in Wrexham and the abuse sometimes involved other adults who used him “like a toy”. On one occasion, at a house in Mold, he said Anglesea “grabbed him by the hair” and indecently assaulted him, calling him “scum” and telling him he had the “power to send him away”.

During the trial, Anglesea was questioned about links to other paedophiles, including Gary Cooke, who is currently serving 14 years in prison, and Peter Howarth, former deputy head of the Bryn Estyn children’s home, who died in prison in 1997.

Judge Geraint Walters told Anglesea “there can only be one sentence and that is a prison sentence”.

The jury found him not guilty of an alternative charge of serious sexual assault. He was granted bail until his sentencing hearing, which will take place at a date yet to be fixed.

In 1994, Anglesea was awarded £375,000 in libel damages after media organisations ran stories about his links to abuse at children’s homes in north Wales.