A volunteer at a Bedfordshire falconry club who pulled down the trousers and boxer shorts of a young boy attending the club, was today given a suspended jail sentence.
Raymond Parry, 68, from Wyngates in Leighton Buzzard committed the offence in a barn at the farm where the club was held while on his own with the boy.
At Luton crown court on Thursday, November 12, 2020, Parry pleaded guilty to an offence of sexually assaulting a child under 13.
The court heard how Parry was a volunteer at the club which was run from a farm in mid-Bedfordshire and it was he who had first suggested the youngsters who attended should have a uniform.
Although the organisers of the club were not fussed about the uniform issue, Perry, said prosecutor Nigel Ogborne, persisted and it was eventually agreed the uniform should consist of a polo shirt and sweat shirt only.
The court was told it would be down to the parents to measure their children for a top and it would not be for the staff of volunteers.
The court was the told how on January 2, 2019, a mum whose young son attended the club, was putting him to bed when he asked her if clothes were removed when being measured.
She told him it wasn’t, and when she asked him why, the boy said there had been an occasion earlier when Parry had pulled down his trousers and boxers.
As a result police were contacted and the boy told them he had been in a barn at the farm with other youngsters and Parry.
He said the other children had been sent outside to handle birds, but he had to stay behind because the defendant told him he had to be measured for his uniform.
The boy said he had gone behind a counter with Parry who at first had measured his chest and then lifted up his top on the pretext of measuring his trousers.
He said he was told to take his trousers down a little bit, but in fact they ended up around his knees or ankles.
Mr Ogborne said the boy told officers the defendant took his boxers down “a little bit further” and all his skin would have been exposed at that point.
The prosecutor said although Parry didn’t touch the boy’s private parts they would have been exposed.
The court was told that despite Parry having a previous conviction for sexual assault on a male under the age of 14 which went back to 1976, he hadn’t informed the falconry club organisers of that fact.
Passing sentence Judge Steven Evans told Parry that because of his conviction in 1976 he should never have offered his services to help at the club.
He said there had been ‘significant planning’ by someone in a position of trust.
Parry was given an eight month prison sentence which was suspended for two years.
He was told he must attend the Horizon Programme for sex offenders.
In addition he was made the subject of a sexual harm prevention order and his name will go on the sex offenders register for the next 10 years.
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