Former local resident jailed in UK for abuse

Accountant Philip Levi, 73, of 24 Vinery Court, Huntingdon, Cambridge, admitted 12 counts of indecent assault on a male person and three counts of indecency with a child at a court appearance on 20 July.

Levi lived in Guernsey and Sark for 15 years after the offences took place.

‘If anyone living in the Bailiwick is a victim of Mr Levi’s, we urge them to make contact with Guernsey Police, either by calling 725111 or by coming to the station, where you will be dealt with in the strictest of confidence and the utmost sensitivity,’ said Detective Chief Inspector Clare Cuthbert.

The offences took place between 1972 and 1985 while he was a leader at a Harrow Scout group.

Survivors of his attacks sat in the public gallery of the court shaking their heads in disgust.

Levi would invite the boys to his home where the abuse took place.

‘Parents put their boys in your trust they assumed as did the boys that you would be a role model,’ Judge Justin Cole told Levi.

‘Instead, in the cases of five boys in your care, who were ranging in age from 13-19 years old, but for the most part were in the bottom part of that category, you chose to systematically sexually abuse them for your own perverted pleasure.

‘Whatever the attitudes of the times, which you rely on, those were children in the main. They were at a sensitive stage of their emotional development and you chose to abuse them for your own sexual pleasure.

‘This was a gross breach of their trust.’

In statements read out to the court, Levi’s victims described feelings of shame and embarrassment. Some have since developed problems with alcohol and found it hard to have loving relationships.

Levi, in October 1985, admitted attempted indecent assault on a 12-year-old boy .

After taking the boy for dinner he brought him back to a caravan where the incident took place.

Levi was fined at that time.

‘It is actually quite embarrassing at times to be part of a system which once took those views,’ said prosecutor Justin Bearman.

In 2005 Levi was stopped at Luton Airport in connection with another offence which was later dropped.

Officers searching his laptop found 484 indecent images of children, including 59 of the worst kind, and he was put on sexual harm prevention order.

Mr Bearman told the court: ‘The offences represent clearly a gross breach of trust.

‘That gross breach of trust has led to the obviously devastating effect on all of them both then and as they grew older and remains to this day.

‘The effect on their adult lives, of the inability to form stable loving relationships are just a few of those breaches of trust.’

Levi was jailed for 11 years three months.