Children's home worker jailed

The children's home closed in the 1980s

A pensioner has been jailed for eight years for carrying out a string of sex assaults on vulnerable young boys at a Birmingham care home where he worked.

Arthur Birch, 82, was found guilty of seven counts of indecent assault and three of a serious sexual nature at a trial at Birmingham Crown Court in June.

The former Desert Rat soldier, who served in North Africa during WWII, carried out the abuse at the Tennal Assessment Centre in Harborne, in the 1970s and 1980s.

His co-accused, 79-year-old Eugene Devoti, was jailed for seven years in September after he had been found guilty of five indecent assaults at the centre.

Lives 'shattered'

Sentencing Birch on Friday, Judge Laurence Marshall said the former nightwatchman, of Wisley Way, Quinton, Birmingham, had "grossly abused" his position and ruined the lives of his victims.

But he told the pensioner, who sat in the dock in a wheelchair, that he was receiving a reduced prison sentence because of his age and also because of his physical and mental health.

"The trial required young men whose lives had been shattered by what you and your co-defendant did to confide in public their most horrible memories," said the judge.

"By your actions, you caused these boys to abscond where they could only subsist by reverting to crime.

Arthur Birch (centre in grey suit)

"They are now leading unhappy lives for a very considerable period because of what happened to them.

"I don't accept that you have no memory of what you did.

" I have seen no signs of remorse for your conduct."

Devoti, a former peripatetic music teacher, of Rising Lane, Baddesley Clinton, Warwickshire, was found guilty of five indecent assaults against boys at the home.

Birch worked at Tennal from 1975 to 1984, while Devoti was employed there between 1972 and 1984.

Toured dormitories

The trial, which heard from 26 men who were aged between 12 and 15 at the time of the offences, was told that the defendants toured dormitories at night, plying children with cigarettes and chocolate.

The pair were cleared of a total of 20 other charges of sex abuse against boys at the home, which housed dysfunctional and vulnerable youngsters and closed in the mid-1980s.

The sentencing hearing was told that Birch was in a poor state of health and may have been in the preliminary stages of a progressive dementing illness.

Rex Tedd QC, defending, argued that his client should be detained under the Mental Health Act 1983 and held in a hospital.

Eugene Devoti: A former teacher

Birch's human right not to be subjected to "inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" in terms of his age and state of health should also be considered, he said.

But Judge Marshall said he accepted the views of Dr Thomas Denning, a prosecution expert witness, who said Birch could be adequately cared for within the prison system.

"If his condition deteriorates, provisions can be made for his removal to hospital for an illness to be treated," said the judge.

"This is not a punishment in which a society is taking its revenge.

Two-year investigation

"It is punishment which, in my judgment, is required by justice."

Detective Inspector Mark Salt, of West Midlands Police, said after the hearing that he welcomed both convictions, which came after a two-year joint investigation with Birmingham social services.

"I am pleased Birch has received a prison sentence," he said.

"The judge made the right decision on the basis of the medical evidence."