A social worker who sexually abused a 13-year-old
A social worker who sexually abused a 13-year-old boy in his care was jailed for 12 months at the Old Bailey today.
(Fri)
Anthony Meredith, 54, molested the teenager more than 20 years ago while working for Greenwich social services between 1976 and 1980, the court heard.
Meredith, once the head of the Catholics Children Society in Notting Hill, fled the country to Malta in the mid 90s after the victim reported him to police.
There the social worker helped to set up the first child protection unit on the island to look after vulnerable children.
But Meredith returned to live in south Wales where police caught up with him in the late 1990s.
But he escaped justice again after he fled the country just weeks before his trial in 1999.
But he was arrested after flying back to the UK in October this year from Albania.
Stewart Hamblin, prosecuting, said the sex abuse began after Meredith befriended the youngster at the Stonefields Assessment Centre in Sidcup.
The boy had been sent there in 1976 after his parents split up and he started committing crime.
Meredith soon began paying the youngster special attention, the court heard.
‘He found the friendliness of the defendant welcome,’ said Mr Hamblin.
‘The defendant suggested to the boy that the next time he ran away from the centre he might like to bump into him at the cinema in Lewisham.
‘For a young boy without his mother it was a beguiling prospect.
‘
Meredith would take the lad to his flat in Forest Hill, and lavish affection on him, saying the boy was like a son to him.
But it was not long before Meredith took the opportunity to sexually abuse the child in his home.
They shared a bed together but the victim thought the social worker was being affectionate.
‘I really did love him, and I thought he loved me as well,’ he later told police.
Meredith committed a range of indecent acts on the boy during the catalogue of abuse, the court heard.
The boy was to tell police when he came forward in 1994: ‘I told him to stop but everytime I told him to stop he had a brilliant way of saying it was allright.
‘
But as he got older Meredith lost interest in him, said Mr Hamblin.
When he was 25, the victim, who was confused about his sexuality, decided to contact Meredith.
The social worker was then a director of the Catholic Childrens Society in Notting Hill.
Meredith left his job and fled to Malta when the victim tried to blackmail him.
On the sun-drenched Island he worked with handicap children and helped set up the first protection unit for kids there.
Police finally caught up with Meredith in Monmouth earlier this year where he had been living for some time.
The Maltese-born social worker immediately admitted abusing the boy when confronted by the allegations.
But Meredith fled the country in March 1999, before he could stand trial at the Old Bailey.
Police arrested him in October this year after a tip-off from British Embassy staff in Tirana that the social worker had applied for travel papers.
The court heard Meredith was fined 15 pounds in 1970 for indecently assaulting a 15 year-old boy.
Meredith, of Toubical, Dixton Rd, Monmouth, admitted three counts of indecent assault.
A count of buggery was ordered to remain on the court file.
Sentencing him to 12 months jail, concurrent on each of the counts of indecent assault, Judge Simon Goldstein accepted he had done ‘inestimable good for many many people’ with his social work.
‘The down side of course is not only that you sexually abused a young boy but you were in a position of responsibility towards him.
‘
The judge added: ‘For the rest of your working life you are disqualified from having anything to do with working with children.
‘
ends
