Abuse lawyer says the case of a paedophile who spent almost three decades on the run after stealing terminally ill man's identity raises serious concerns

The BBC has reported that Richard Burrows, 80, has been convicted of 54 child sex abuse charges at Chester Crown Court, having previously admitted to a further 43 charges.

The court heard that Burrows had abused boys as young as nine years old, with the abuse taking place during his time as a housemaster at a Cheshire boarding school and as a scout master in the West Midlands from the late 1960s to the mid 1990s.  

In 1997, Burrows fled the UK having been due to stand trial over alleged child sex offences. Nearly three decades later, police officers were able to track Burrows using specialist software to search for images online and discovered that he had been using the name Peter Smith, a terminally ill acquaintance of Burrows’ whose identity he had stolen and used to illegally obtain a passport.

Police had been due to begin the extradition process, before finding that Burrows had planned to return to the UK.

In his recent trial, the court heard that Burrows had fled to Thailand because he wanted to go sailing and claimed he had not carried out the offences, before returning to the UK after 27 years due to running out of money.  

The BBC reported that Burrows described his time in Thailand as “living in paradise”, with Detective Inspector Eleanor Atkinson, who investigated Burrows, saying that his victims were “left to suffer as they struggled to try and rebuild their lives.”

Dino Nocivelli said:

"This shocking case saw justice delayed for nearly 30 years. Victims were left without closure whilst their abuser freely walked the streets under a different name.

“Whilst it is good to see justice finally being served, victims will rightly be questioning how their abuser was able to evade the authorities for so long.”