Man who abused vulnerable children for three decades jailed

A 77-year-old man who physically and sexually abused children over three decades and forced one to run around a garden while carrying tins around his neck filled with concrete has been jailed for six years.

The High Court in Edinburgh heard that Archibald Thorburn started abusing his first victim in July 1963 and continued for 29 years. He also preyed on other children at the time.

Thorburn, from Edinburgh, denied any wrongdoing and was found guilty of 14 charges and placed on the sex offenders register for life.

During sentencing, Judge O'Grady said: "Even in the face of the most distressing evidence, you have shown not a flicker of emotion - not a hint of regret."

Throughout the trial jurors were told how Thorburn repeatedly slapped, punched and kicked his first victim when he was just six.

He also struck him with a spirit level and forced him to run around a garden carrying tins filled with concrete by a rope around his neck.

On various occasions between July 1963 and April 1968, he sexually assaulted the boy.

Warning: This story contains distressing details.

During evidence, the man - who is not named - said that while at a care home in Portobello he shared a room with Thorburn, who was older than him.

The man, who is now aged 69, said he endured sexual abuse that resulted in him vomiting on the carpet.

He said: "I was made to clean it up. I was scared of him from day one. He had a temper on him. He would just lash out."

The court also heard that Thorburn would participate in disciplinary procedures such as belting the children.

The man added: "He was like the enforcer. Sometimes we were made to run around the back garden with heavy cans of concrete.

"We would put them over our shoulders and were made to run round in a figure eight shape in the garden. If we fell we had to get up and do however many laps we were told to do."

The man told the court he was also battered with a scaffolding pole and said: "He was hitting me on the body with it, my legs, my arms, a couple of times on the head."

On various occasions between 8 June 1965 and 6 March 1968, Thorburn also subjected a nine-year-old girl to violent physical assaults.

He shaved the child's hair and on one occasion sexually assaulted her, the court heard.

During this time he forced another eight-year-old girl to take scalding hot and freezing cold baths as a "punishment" and forced her to stare at a photograph of him over a "period of hours."

He struck her if she took her eyes off the image and forced the child to go to school in soiled underwear.

Between 23 July 1963 and 20 January 1971, the court was told how Thorburn repeatedly slapped, punched and kicked one boy on the head and body.

He also shaved his head and forced him to watch when he punished other children.

In the mid 1970s Thorburn preyed on another 13-year-old boy and subjected him to violent physical assaults over a three-year period.

On one occasion, the court heard how he brandished a hot poker at the boy and threatened to brand him with it.

He denied committing sexual offences against the boy.

Defence advocate Brian McConnachie KC told the court that since being remanded, Thorburn was being investigated for bowel cancer.

McConnachie added: "He is finding life in custody very difficult."

Announcing the sentence Judge O'Grady said he would take into account Thorburn's age and lack of prior offending but said the sentence "must be anchored in the appalling circumstances of these offences and your cruel and wicked conduct."

He said: "All of your victims were vulnerable, damaged, rejected, defenceless and helpless, as you well knew.

"Indeed you taunted them with the fact.

"All of them grotesquely used and abused by you, in body and soul, their childhoods unfolding in fear and humilation and cruelty for no reason beyond the pleasure and satisfaction which it so obviously gave you to treat them as you did.

O'Grady said Thorburn refused to take responsibility and showed no regret.

"The damage you have done is incalculable," he said. "It is clearly damage which lives on and always will in the shadow you have cast over their lives.

"You stole their childhoods and blighted their futures. And whatever sentence this court imposes, there is no changing that."

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