06 February,2011 09:48 AM IST | | Agencies
An official tour guide at Windsor Castle who has shown thousands of parents and kids around the Queen's official Berkshire home has been exposed as a paedophile.
Ross Thomas, 76, groomed an 11-year-old boy and carried out a string of sex attacks on him 25 years ago, a court heard yesterday.
His sick secret was finally revealed when he and a pal admitted putting the lad "through hell" over a six-month period.
The court heard that Thomas and Leonard Bennett, 76, befriended the boy at a gun club and lured him into meeting them on a nearby beach in Gosport, Hants.
They would take the boy into public toilets and sexually abuse him.
Married father-of-one Thomas, of Slough, Berks, admitted gross indecency with a child and indecent assault. Bennett, of Gosport, admitted two charges of gross indecency with a child and one of indecent assault.
Both were sentenced to 12 months in jail suspended for two years and put on the sex offenders register for ten years at Portsmouth Crown Court.
They were each ordered to pay 1,000 pounds to their victim and banned from working with kids.
Thomas will now have to quit his voluntary part-time role at Windsor.
Victim Darryl Sheppard, 37 and a dad of two, bravely waived his right to anonymity to talk to The Sun of the damage the pair had done to his life.
"They are both scum of the earth and when I saw them in court I couldn't even look them in the eye. To prey on a young boy like that is the lowest of the low. They were predators," the Sun quoted the musician, from Gosport, as saying.
"It's disgusting that Thomas was allowed to work at Windsor. The thought he was taking kids round the Castle made me sick," he added.
