Description
A paedophile ex parish councillor, 78, who sexually and physically abused four youngsters and forced them to fight in makeshift boxing ring until they 'drew blood' has been jailed for 12 years.
Peter Orme, 78, spent almost 15 years physically, emotionally and sexually abusing children and today started a 12-year jail sentence.
Orme used to be chairman of Woughton Community Council in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire.
He was found guilty of sexually and physically abusing children from the 1970s to the 1990s.
Judge Geoffrey Payne was told details of the abuse, including details of the boxing bouts two young children took part in.
Jailing Orme, Judge Payne said: 'You would arrange chairs in the living room into a form of boxing ring and would require the children to fight each other and goad them on, encouraging the boy who was under 10 years old at the time, to fight with the girl. The aim was to draw blood.'
Orme stood in the dock at Aylesbury Crown Court as the judge heard how he had abused three girls and one boy from 1977 to 1992.
Orme had also forced a boy, aged under 13 at the time, to perform a sex act on him in the bathtub and sexually assaulted a teenage girl after buying her vodka and waiting until she passed out.
He was convicted by a jury of two counts of gross indecency with a boy under 14 years, one count of neglecting a child likely to cause unnecessary suffering and four counts of indecent assault on a girl under the age of 14 years.
He was also convicted of one count of indecent assault on girl under 16 years and one count of taking an indecent photograph of a child.
Orme will also be on the Sex Offender's Register for the rest of his life.
One of Orme's victims, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said: 'I think what he did has destroyed me. My mind is a total wreck. It's always going through my mind.'
Another said: 'When I look back at my childhood and at the time he came into my life I can't think of a single day I was truly happy.
'He would question me and call me stupid. I found out later on I was dyslexic but I had thought I was just thick.'
Defending him, Tania Panagiotopoulou said Orme had lived in 24-hour hospital care before his arrest and asked for a 'just and proportionate' sentence.
Sentencing Orme, Judge Payne said: 'As soon as you came into the lives of the children, their lives turned for the worst.
'You mistreated one of the victims and one of the ways was by smacking him on the bottom and bending him over your knee and taking his trousers down to humiliate him.
'All of the children lived in fear. Another victim was kicked by you and you would pull her underwear off and smack her, pulling her underwear off in front of boys, which I'm sure was calculated to humiliate and degrade her.
'One of the victims had low self-esteem and you invited her to the flat and got her drunk.
'I imagine you thought the children would not come forward and if they did they wouldn't be believed and you were proved right to a point - there were complaints to police but no action was taken - a sad indictment of those times.
'Your past conduct has caught up with you now.'