BI-SEXUAL former assistant Scout leader Allan Pollitt sexually abused six young boys and has now been jailed for 15 years.

A jury convicted the 43-year-old from Wellington Terrace, Birkenhead, of one charge of buggery and nine charges of indecent assault involving four boys.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that two of his victims were Cubs and two were youngsters from a Liverpool children's home.

The former director of the Birkenhead Scout Gang Show also pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting two other Scouts.

Judge William Wickham, the Recorder of Liverpool, told Pollitt that he had been convicted on overwhelming evidence of abusing the boys, who were aged between nine and 17.

He told him he had abused two positions of trust and committed the offences "to gratify your perversion."

He added: "You were on the staff of a children's home; young, disadvantaged children were in your care. You owed them a particular obligation of trust. What chance is there for such children? They deserved care and loving kindness. Instead of that you abused them."

Judge Wickham said: "You joined the Scouts, no doubt just as you went to that children's home, in order to find opportunities to abuse children.

"Two families trusted you and continued to trust you with their children, not knowing what you were up to. That was another grave breach of trust to abuse Scouts in your care."

The court had listened with mounting astonishment to the way Pollitt had described abusing one 15-year-old Scout on the beach of a Scottish island, said the judge.

"I don't think anyone will forget that. It consisted of an almost unbelievable degree of depravity," he told Pollitt, a self confessed bi-sexual, of Birkenhead.

Prosecuting counsel Mr Mark Brown told how one victim from Parkfield Children's Home in Liverpool told a care boss that Pollitt had abused him, but nothing was done about it. And two weeks later, when he assaulted the boy again, Pollitt answered the boy's threats to report him by saying: 'You've already tried that and look what happened.'

The court heard how Pollitt had also helped with the 26th Birkenhead Scout troup at Claughton.

Mr Brown said that in 1973 Pollitt indecently assaulted a 10-year-old Cub Scout while they were on a camping trip at Waverton, Cheshire.

He was sleeping on the stage and during the night he called the boy to the stage and got him into his sleeping bag to be his 'hotwater bottle'. Pollitt cuddled the boy, who fell asleep but woke to find Pollitt indecently assaulting him. This happened three times during the week-long trip.

He molested the boy again when he was about 12, after having befriended the boy's parents and stayed overnight with the family.

Mr Brown said that the fourth victim was also a Scout, whose parents Pollitt also became friendly with. He sexually molested him on a camping trip at Waverton when he was 13 years old and later at Pollitt's home.

Pollitt alleged that the claims were untrue and suggested that the boys at the home had made them up in order to claim compensation. He further claimed that the Scouts had made false allegations against him to topple him from his position as director of the Gang Show.

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