November 2014 “Champion” foster carer from Swansea Valley exposed as lifelong paedophile A “champion” foster carer from the Swansea Valley has been exposed as a lifelong paedophile. Christopher Purnell, aged 62, was downloading child abuse images until days before he was arrested more than 30 years after he began offending. Purnell, once the chairman of his local county-wide foster carers association, had also set up a helpline for children in distress. But a jury at Swansea Crown Court heard he was one of the perverts causing the distress. Purnell was convicted of 22 offences of indecency with a child, indecent assault, sexual activity with a child and making indecent photographs. He was jailed for seven and a half years and ordered to register with the police as a sex offender for life. Purnell, of Minyrhos, Ystradgynlais, South Wales, had denied the charges and called his accusers liars. The jury heard that police computer experts were able to discover that Purnell had trawled the internet using terms like “teenage nudist, “boys in licra tights” and “boys in boxers.” Purnell told the jury he had been researching material for a book he was writing on naturism. But it was never published. John Hipkin, prosecuting, asked Purnell what the searches had to do with naturism. One man told how Purnell had taken photographs of him naked when he was a boy, telling him he had a customer who paid according to how dirty they were. The man said he agreed to pose because he thought the money might lead to a better life. “He kept on and on about a man willing to pay thousands of pounds for real photographs of my genitals. Even afterwards he asked me for more and more, saying the first ones had not been valuable enough,” added the witness. He said Purnell threatened that he could use his power to have him put into a remand home if he did not co-operate. Purnell boasted to one boy about his importance in fostering, and how he liaised with the local authority’s social services department. Purnell also got a teenage boy drunk. The boy woke up the following morning without any pyjamas on and “feeling really bad.” Det Con Simon Davies said three of Purnell’s computers turned out to be of interest. One showed that he had downloaded child abuse images at 3.31am on January 28, 2012, only a few days before he was arrested and while his innocent wife Susan had been asleep in bed. Mr Hipkin said Purnell’s sex offending dated back to 1982, when he indecently assaulted a boy, an offence for which he was convicted. He was also found guilty of making indecent photographs of a child in 2012, as well as 20 crimes in between. After the jury returned guilty verdicts, one of Purnell’s victims said: “No-one could say anything against him in those days, he was a champion of fostering. And no-one was going to believe what I had to say. “He was always going on about he was chairman of this, chairman of that. At the age he assaulted me it is very worrying and I accepted what I was told. “Now, Purnell is where he belongs, in jail,” he added.