Nov 2010

£200,000 for victim of sex beast

COMPENSATION … a boy sexually abused by Leslie Loram has been awarded a £200,000 payout.

A boy sexually abused by a Rochdale undertaker after being lured into a child prostitution ring has been awarded more than £200,000 compensation.

In what is believed to be the first case of its kind the boy sued four paedophiles – including Leslie Loram, 56, a former undertaker – who repeatedly abused him.

London’s High Court heard how the boy was just 12 when sick Leeds paedophile, Nathan Eyre, groomed him with drink, drugs and threats of violence before ‘selling’ him for £500 to child prostitution boss Raymond Hawthorne.

The appalling abuse the boy suffered at the hands of Eyre, Hawthorne and his perverted clients in Manchester, including Loram, has left him psychologically scarred for life.

On Friday Mrs Justice Swift awarded the boy, now an adult, £209,450 damages for his ‘pain and suffering’ and the destruction of his childhood.

The payout includes £20,000 ‘aggravated damages’ to mark the horror of the abuse he endured.

In 2004 Loram, who was said to have been one of Hawthorne’s best customers, was jailed for three and a half years after admitting two counts of a serious sexual assault and one of indecent assault.

He was caught after police studied Eyre’s mobile phone records.

Eyre was handed an 11-year jail term and Hawthorne nine years, for a string of sex crimes.

Another of Hawthorne’s clients David Riley, 62, from Eccles, was jailed for two and a half years for his part in the abuse.

Hawthorne was the only one of the four defendants to play any part in the High Court hearing on Friday, claiming that he was ‘significantly less’ responsible for the abuse than Eyre.

Mrs Justice Swift said the boy was one of a large number of local boys Eyre would lure to his flat in Leeds with the promise of air rifle shooting and letting them drive his car. He would ply them with booze, cigarettes and drugs while grooming them for sexual abuse.

Eyre, in his 30s, ‘singled out’ the boy and gradually encouraged him into more and more extreme sexual acts with his clients and other boys.

Eventually, he was subjected to ‘a campaign of sexual abuse’ with Eyre inviting adults to his flat to molest BJM for their own gratification.

When the boy was 14, Eyre arranged to ‘sell’ him for £500 to Hawthorne, also in his 30s, who ran a child prostitute ring in Manchester.

Over the next seven days, the boy was subjected to abuse by clients of Hawthorne’s and was required to ‘provide services’ for four or five different men every day. Meanwhile, police were hunting for after his family reported him missing, and tracked him down on October 31 2003.

Loram, then in his late 40s, and David Riley were among Hawthorne’s clients who subjected the boy to abuse, the judge said. Riley molested him once and Loram carried out ‘a serious and violent indecent assault’ on the 14-year-old. The impact of the abuse was devastating for the boy.

The judge said that, in 2008, he tried to kill himself.

When he was diagnosed HIV positive later that year, he again tried to kill himself by taking an overdose. He continues to self-harm, ‘sees no point in life’ and has no interests apart from watching television.

The boy’’s award of £209,450 damages, includes £70,000 for his’’pain, suffering and loss of amenity’, sums for his lost earnings and ‘aggravated damages’ of £20,000 to mark the horror of the abuse he endured.