Jail term extended for 'monstrous' child abuser

A former children's home worker who was jailed for sexually abusing young girls has been ordered to spend another 18 months in prison after admitting attacking a young boy.

John Laister, 83, was jailed for 14 years in 2014, after he was convicted of raping and abusing children at a care home in Bramhope, Leeds, and at a church in Bradford. He also received a further 11-year prison term in 2019 for further sex attacks.

On Tuesday he was sentenced at York Crown Court to an additional 18 months after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a boy at a care home in Scarborough in the 1970s.

North Yorkshire Police said Laister, formerly of Sunningwell, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, had "abused the trust placed in him...for his own selfish, sexual gratification".

The force said Laister had been working as a houseparent at May Lodge children's home, in Scarborough, when he sexually assaulted the boy, while the child was recovering from major surgery.

Det Con Ali Morris said the victim was "highly vulnerable" and without "a mother or father he could confide in".

"He was sexually assaulted by the defendant, whose job it was to look after the wellbeing and welfare of children in the home," she said.

"The defendant would have been well aware of the victim's background and vulnerability and saw him as easy prey."

When Laister was jailed in 2014, the court heard he had been working at the now-closed Hilton Grange home when he raped a vulnerable girl under his care.

Following allegations against him, he was moved on but continued to abuse young girls while acting as a Sunday school teacher at Thorpe Edge Evangelical Church in Bradford.

Passing sentence at the time, the judge called him "a sexual predator of monstrous proportions".

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