Serial paedophile Richard Burrows jailed for 46 years for child sexual abuse offences
Serial paedophile Richard Burrows has been jailed for 46 years for numerous sexual offences against young boys.
The 81-year-old former boarding school housemaster and scout leader, spent 27 years on the run in Thailand before he was arrested at Heathrow Airport last year.
Before his trial, Burrows admitted 43 offences – including indecent assault of boys, making indecent images of children, possession of indecent images of children and four counts of possession of false identity documents with intent.
He denied 54 others, which jurors at Chester Crown Court convicted him of last month.
Those offences include indecent assault of boys, buggery, attempted buggery and indecency with a child.
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Burrows is a ‘nasty creature’, victim says
The trial heard that Burrows had obtained positions of authority and systematically abused 24 boys from the 1960s to the mid-1990s.
He had worked as a housemaster at a school for troubled boys and befriended other youngsters through amateur radio clubs.
Burrows was initially charged in May 1997 but failed to attend a hearing later that year.
A distinctive mark helped prove “Peter Smith” was Richard Burrows. Pic: Cheshire Police
He remained on the wanted list until police using facial recognition software matched him to a man using the name Peter Smith. He had stolen the identity of a terminally ill friend to obtain a passport.
Burrows described “living in paradise” in emails found after his eventual arrest, written after he fled to Thailand.
The judge Steven Everett told Burrows: “You are a despicable man. You have ruined countless lives.
“These serious sexual assaults were committed by you because you are a predator.
“You deliberately positioned yourself among groups and communities to get closer to them, and to groom and sexually abuse young boys.”
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‘He’s a paedophile, and that defines him forever’
The judge said he had “no doubt” he was never going to come back to the UK had he not run out of money and been diagnosed with cancer.
“I have seen no remorse in your behaviour,” he added.
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One of those was his first victim, aged 14 at the time in the late 1960s, and now 71.
He told Sky News’ chief North of England correspondent Greg Milam that he feels like a weight has been lifted after waiting 57 years for justice.
“It does actually feel like a weight’s been lifted. You hear that expression all through life, but it’s the first time ever really felt it,” he said.
He described Burrows as a “devious, nasty creature”.
After he was sentenced, Detective Inspector Eleanor Atkinson branded him a “coward”.
“He knew he was guilty in 1997, but rather than face the consequences of his actions, he fled the country after fraudulently obtaining a passport using the identity of an unwell man,” she said.
“He spent the last 27 years, in his own words, ‘living in paradise’. It is clear that he did not spare a thought for his victims, who were trying to live their lives under the shadow of the abuse they had suffered.”
Crown Prosecution Service prosecutor Samantha Thompson said Burrows will “very likely never leave prison”.
“Burrows is an unrepentant paedophile who used his position of trust to sexually abuse boys over three decades,” she said.
“His victims suffered horrendous abuse made worse by many of them not being able to tell anyone for fear that they would not be believed.
“This was borne out in some cases, where boys did speak up but were dismissed, and Burrows was able to move on.”
The UK-US trade deal has been signed and is “done”, US President Donald Trump has said as he met Sir Keir Starmer at the G7 summit.
The US president told reporters in Canada: “We signed it, and it’s done. It’s a fair deal for both. It’ll produce a lot of jobs, a lot of income.”
Sir Keir said the document “implements” the deal to cut tariffs on cars and aerospace, describing it as a “really important agreement”.
“So this is a very good day for both of our countries – a real sign of strength,” the prime minister added.
Mr Trump added that the UK was “very well protected” against any future tariffs, saying: “You know why? Because I like them”.
However, he did not say whether levies on British steel exports to the US would be set to 0%, saying “we’re gonna let you have that information in a little while”.
Mr Trump also praised Sir Keir as a “great” prime minister, adding: “We’ve been talking about this deal for six years, and he’s done what they haven’t been able to do.”
He added: “We’re very longtime partners and allies and friends and we’ve become friends in a short period of time.
“He’s slightly more liberal than me to put it mildly… but we get along.”
Sir Keir added that “we make it work”.
As the pair exited a mountain lodge in the Canadian Rockies where the summit is being held, Mr Trump held up a physical copy of the trade agreement to show reporters.
Several leaves of paper fell from the binding, and Sir Keir quickly stooped to pick them up, saying: “A very important document.”
Sir Keir Starmer picks up paper from the UK-US trade deal after Donald Trump dropped it at the G7 summit. Pic: Reuters
The US president also appeared to mistakenly refer to a “trade agreement with the European Union” at one point as he stood alongside the British prime minister.
Mr Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs on countries in April. At the time, he announced 10% “reciprocal” rates on all UK exports – as well as separately announced 25% levies on cars and steel.
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In a joint televised phone call in May, Sir Keir and Mr Trump announced the UK and US had agreed on a trade deal – but added the details were being finalised.
Ahead of the G7 summit, the prime minister said he would meet Mr Trump for “one-on-one” talks, and added the agreement “really matters for the vital sectors that are safeguarded under our deal, and we’ve got to implement that”.
Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
Politics latest: Grooming gangs findings unveiled
The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
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Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
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