A paedophile who spent nearly three decades on the run in Thailand to escape going on trial in the UK was today convicted of dozens of historical sexual abuse offences.
Richard Burrows, a former boarding school housemaster and scout leader, had admitted 43 offences and denied 54 others, which jurors convicted him of at Chester Crown Court today.
The predator became one of the UK’s most wanted fugitives when he fled the country before his trial was due to take place in 1997, but he was arrested at Heathrow Airport in March last year after returning from Thailand.
Burrows, 80, was snared after he tried to re-enter the UK after 27 years living under a false name in what he described as his ‘paradise’, a jury heard.
He was originally arrested in 1997 after an investigation into sexual abuse in children’s homes, the trial heard.
Burrows, then 53, was charged with a number of offences, which he denied, but failed to appear at a pre-trial plea and preparation hearing at the same court on December 8, 1997.
He had in fact fled to Thailand under the name of Peter Leslie Smith, having cloned an acquaintance’s identity and used it to obtain a passport.
The paedophile, originally from Sutton Coldfield, worked as a housemaster at a school for troubled teenagers in Cheshire in the 1960s and later worked with scouts and amateur radio clubs in the Midlands.
The trial heard how he used his positions of trust and responsibility – which also included working as a master at a children’s home ‘to satisfy himself sexually’ by abusing boys aged between 10 and 15 from the late 1960s to the mid 1990s.
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Richard Burrows, a former boarding school housemaster and scout leader, had admitted 43 offences and denied 54 others, which jurors convicted him of today
Richard Burrows, 80, at a previous hearing at Chester Crown Court
