"Predatory' abuser dies in nursing home

A PREDATORY Plymouth paedophile who raped and sexually assaulted young boys has died after spending his final days in a Cornwall nursing home.

- CARL EVE

Peter Norsworthy, from Plymouth, was jailed in October 2006 for 15 years after being found guilty at Plymouth Crown Court of 13 charges - including nine of rape and three of indecent assault, all on boys under the age of 16.

He was also found guilty of intimidating one of his victims into retracting his original sexual abuse accusation, made in 1996. The offences covered a 12-year-period between 1988 and 2000. The first incident occurred in September 1988 the last was between January 1997 and January 2000.

He was arrested in June 2005 after two victims bravely came forward and it was later revealed by a police detective that Norsworthy had been repeatedly named by victims during the investigation into Britain's most prolific paedophile, William Goad. However, unlike Goad, Norsworthy, formerly of Taunton Avenue, Whitleigh, had denied all the offences, forcing his accusers to give harrowing accounts in the full glare of a public court room.

Many of the young men broke down sobbing in court as they recalled the vile and sickening abuse they suffered at the hands of Norsworthy when they were children.

During the trial, mothers of two of the victims sat in the public gallery, painfully listening to their son's accounts in horrific detail for the very first time. The court heard how the boys had also been abused by Goad, who was jailed for life in September 2004 after he admitted sexually abusing more than a dozen young boys.

Goad died of natural causes at HMP Albany in October 2012.