A 63-year-old man convicted of historic sex abuse has been jailed for nine and a half years.
Harold Hamilton had been convicted of 10 sex offences involving a boy who was aged between nine and 11-years-old.
Hamilton, of Park Avenue, Weaverham in Northwich, had denied the allegations but was convicted after a trial at Liverpool Crown Court.
Jailing the defendant, who appeared via video link from Walton prison, Judge Norman Wright said he had repeatedly abused the victim “for your own personal sexual gratification”.
He said the most serious offences involved him simulating sexual intercourse with the boy which “fell just on the other side of attempted penetration”.
The judge said his behaviour had had “a corrosive affect on the victim who had then yet to obtain and realise his own sexuality”.
He said it was clear the victim had put it to the back of his mind and “blanked it from his life”. It came back to the fore and he made a disclosure about it in 2004 but took no action about it.
However, “it clawed its way back into his consciousness” and the only way he was able to cope was with the excessive consumption of alcohol. Eventually he felt he had to come forward and he went to the police last year.
Hamilton was found guilty of seven offences of indecent assault and three offences of indecency. He was ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register for life.
Owen Edwards, defending, said Hamilton “is a broken man in ill health. His shame is now a very public shame”.
