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From
http://www.kentonline.co.uk 20 March 2015.
A singer and pub
landlord has been jailed for four years for indecency with a
four-year-old boy.
Billy Nutt, who once supported Shirley Bassey on tour, stood
shame-faced in the dock as a judge told him the offence had been an
aberration and “utter madness”.
The gay 55-year-old, who runs the "Providence
Inn" at Sandgate, Folkestone and previously ran the "Dog and Bear"
pub in Canterbury, denied sexual assault, but was convicted by a jury.
Maidstone Crown Court heard Nutt, of Black Eagle Drive, Northfleet,
was arrested after the boy told his mother what had happened.
“My reaction to police being at my door was total surprise,” he said.
“I felt shocked, stunned, disbelief” - Billy Nutt
Prosecutor Catherine Farrelly said when police went to his flat last
year “in plain sight” next to his bed was a gay pornographic magazine
open on a page showing oral sex between two men.
Miss Farrelly said a forensic scientist examined the boy’s underpants
he had been wearing at the time and saliva found on the front matched
Nutt’s DNA profile.
Miss Farrelly said when the boy told his mother what had happened in
the early part of last year he made a licking motion with his tongue.
The judge described Nutt's offences as "an aberration."
“She was stunned by what she heard,” she said. “She was shocked and
upset.”
The boy repeated the allegation when interviewed by a police officer.
“He told me not to tell anybody,” he said. “He said it was a secret.”
Nutt, who grew up in the Temple Hill area of Dartford, said he played
in bands and went on to have a solo career, working in clubs and on
cruise ships.
“I performed all over the world,” he said. “I decided to slow down.
I’d had enough of driving 2,000 miles a week and rushing to get a boat
or plane.
"It is not as glamorous as it sounds.”
Nutt said he decided to have “a more normal life” running pubs. He
declared that he was “openly gay”.
He claimed he only tickled the boy and blew raspberries on his
stomach. “I noticed he had a lot of saliva on his belly,” he said. “I
wiped his belly.”
He said he believed the saliva would have been transferred from his
hand onto the boy’s pants.
“My reaction to police being at my door was total surprise,” he said.
“I felt shocked, stunned, disbelief.”
He added that he did not know how the gay magazine came to be open on
the floor of his bedroom.
Nutt denied having a sexual interest in children and assaulting the
boy.
Judge David Griffith-Jones QC made a restraining order banning Nutt
from contact with the boy or his mother.
His name will appear on the sex offenders’ register and he will be
barred from working with children.
A sexual harm prevention order banning unsupervised contact with
children was made to protect the public. |
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