John Foster 79

Description

A retired bus driver convicted of sexually abusing four teenage boys over a period of nearly 30 years, including arranging for them to have sex with his wife while he watched, faces a long prison sentence.

John Foster, 78, asked some of the young boys to have sex with his wife on numerous occasions while he encouraged them to do so and eagerly looked on. He was lying next to them in the same bed at the time.

Foster got to know the boys while he was working as a bus driver. He repeatedly abused them in his car, including on football or train spotting trips, and while one of them was on holiday in London and the Isle of Wight with him, Hull Crown Court heard.

Foster, of Main Street, Wawne, near Beverley, denied 28 sex offences, involving four boys, but he was convicted by a jury of 27 of them after a trial. The charges included indecent assault, indecency with a child, rape and attempted rape, between July 1973 and February 2002. He was cleared of one charge of indecent assault on the direction of the judge.

Tom Storey, prosecuting, said that the offences happened over a period of nearly 30 years. They took place after Foster got to know them and befriended them while he was working as a bus driver in East Yorkshire. He had previously lived in the Burton Agnes and Harpham areas, near Driffield.

The boys were usually aged 12 or 13 when Foster began talking to them and befriending them before taking them out in his car for trips. He had also given them free bus trips. The abuse began by touching the boys and then progressing to sexual activity.

Some of the boys were taken to watch football matches, including in Manchester and Hull, or to watch trains, something that Foster had an interest in, during trips to Crewe and London. The abuse took place during the journeys or while they were staying overnight away from home. Some of the incidents took place at Foster's home.

He allowed some of the boys to steer the car, either from the passenger seat or while sitting on his lap. "He would buy them cigarettes or give them money to do so," said Mr Storey. Foster would also, in some cases, buy them alcohol.

Foster, in one case, bought the gas aerosol Damp Start, usually used to help start a car engine, for a boy to inhale to "produce a high like glue sniffing". These were all used as rewards or payments in return for the sexual abuse that Foster was "inflicting on these boys", said Mr Storey.

It no doubt "increased their dependency" on Foster and the likelihood that they would spend time with him. "By virtue of their age, these boys were all vulnerable at the time they were abused," said Mr Storey.

As a bus driver, Foster was in a position of trust in relation to the boys. "At the time, they were, in law, incapable of consenting to what took place," said Mr Storey. "In short, they could not do so."

Foster was married at the time to Dorothy Ann Foster, known as Ann, and it was claimed that he persuaded two of the boys to have sex with her. This was allegedly while he, his wife and one of the boys were in bed together and he watched. He tried to persuade the other boys to do the same with her but either they or she declined to do so, claimed Mr Storey.

Foster took one boy to London for his 16th birthday and abused him, said Mr Storey. The boy said that he had suffered "three years of hell" because of sexual abuse. "He described John Foster as having destroyed him," said Mr Storey. "Eventually, he ended up cracking up and then going to the police." The incidents in relation to this boy were "harrowing" because they were "horrible" and had left physical scars.

Foster did not claim that there was any consent from the boys for sexual activity. "He says that the entire thing has been fabricated and this sexual activity never took place with anybody," said Mr Storey.

The matters came to light in 2019 when police went to speak to one of the boys on a completely separate, unrelated allegation and he told them that he had been sexually abused by Foster when he was aged 13.

Checks of records from 2015 revealed that a health worker had contacted police to report that one of her clients had allegedly been abused by Foster. That boy was contacted and he and his brother made allegations. Police also found that, in 2010, a fourth boy had reported to the police that he had been sexually abused by Foster when he was 13 but the police "inexplicably" did nothing about this.

Mr Storey told the jury that Foster had been convicted of similar offences before and after the period of the current charges. Foster had been convicted in 1961 of two offences of indecently assaulting a boy under 16, with seven offences of gross indecency taken into consideration.

In 2007, Foster was convicted of three offences of sexual activity with a boy under 16. The significance of these convictions was that they showed that Foster had a "propensity or tendency" to commit precisely this sort of offence against young teenage boys, said Mr Storey.

Foster was arrested in February 2020 and police found, at his home, an envelope with old photo booth pictures showing him as a much younger man with the two brothers. He denied all the sexual offences during police interviews or that his wife had been involved. He confirmed that he had been a bus driver between 1962 and 2006, had two children and that he used to be known as "Big John". He claimed that, if he took the boys out for free bus trips or car outings, it was because they were "all lonely lads" and he was doing them a favour by taking them out for the day.

He denied buying solvents for one of the boys to sniff and denied using sex toys. "He denied ever having a liking for young boys," said Mr Storey.

Foster had been on bail during the trial but he was remanded in custody after the jury verdicts to await sentence.