Fred Talbot: Ex-weatherman jailed for four years over sex abuse of boys

Jailed: Weatherman Fred Talbot
PA
Mark Chandler15 June 2017

Ex-TV weatherman Fred Talbot has been jailed for four years for a string of sex offences against schoolboys.

The 67-year-old indecently assaulted seven teenage boys in his care during camping and boating trips in the 1970s and 1980s while working as a biology teacher at a school in the Manchester area.

He is already serving a five-year sentence imposed in Manchester in 2015 for indecently assaulting two other schoolboys.

During a nine-day trial at Lanark Sheriff Court last month, Talbot denied the allegations.

But a jury took four hours to convict him of seven of the nine historical abuse charges against him.

Sex abuse: Television weatherman Fred Talbot (Picture: Rex)

The offences, against boys aged 15 to 17, took place between 1978 and 1981 during separate trips to Scotland near the St Mary's Loch area in Moffat, Dumfries and Galloway, and the Caledonian Canal, near Inverness in the Highlands.

A series of witnesses, now men aged in their 50s who cannot be named for legal reasons, told of their excitement at going on the excursions - sometimes the first time away from their parents.

Many of them recalled how Talbot used his position to engineer situations to target those he should have been looking after.

The court heard the attacks could be at night when a victim was isolated or after they had consumed alcohol.

His conviction followed days of "overwhelming and compelling" evidence against Talbot, including from Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown and a witness appearing over a video link from Australia.

One man told of his "horror" when he awoke - after being "singled out" to go to the pub - to find Talbot touching him in a tent while partially-clothed.

The four-year sentence is due to start from August, at the end of the punishment part of his current jail term.

The television personality, who regularly appeared on a floating weather map in Liverpool's Albert Dock for ITV's This Morning show for several years, stood and nodded as Sheriff Nikola Stewart delivered her sentence on Thursday afternoon.

She said he "grossly abused the trust" placed in him as a teacher with "systematic" abuse of schoolboys.

"It is beyond doubt these trips were organised with sexual exploitation of these boys very much in mind," Sheriff Stewart said.

"By denying your guilt and insisting on a trial, you put each victim through further trauma."

Talbot was cleared of two charges - of indecent assault and lewd, indecent and libidinous practices - on not proven verdicts.

In 2015, Talbot was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of indecent assaults on two pupils from the same school and he was jailed for five years.

Those assaults happened on school canal barge trips in the Cheshire area in the mid-1970s.

Additional reporting by the Press Association.

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