A JUDGE has jailed the former boss of an Oxfordshire children’s home for 12-and-a-half years for sexually abusing boys during the 1970s and 1980s.

Rodney Smallman, of Erica Close, Banbury, was unanimously found guilty of 15 counts of indecent assault on male children in December at Oxford Crown Court.

The 72-year-old showed no emotion as Judge Zoe Smith announced his sentence this morning and told him: "One can see the terrible impact your behaviour had."

The assaults took place between February 1976 and March 1983 and Smallman's barrister Jennifer Edwards said today that her client still denies he committed the offences.

Prosecutor Giles Curtis-Raleigh read out statements from one of Smallman's victims in which he describes how the abuse "ruined his life".

The barrister said another had "lived in a silent hell for 30 years" because after the abuse he felt "ashamed and dirty".

Smallman, who has another conviction for abusing boys in 1985, was also made subject to a sexual offences prevention order banning unsupervised contact with boys indefinitely.

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