london paedophile ring #2 Sexual Abuser

April 1989 13 years for sex crimes against children A 65-YEAR-OLD sex offender whose catalogue of abuse against boys dates back 47 years was jailed for 13 years at the Old Bailey yesterday.

Two other men were also jailed, one for nine years and one for seven years.

Kenneth Martin from Kilburn, who was convicted by a jury of 11 offences and pleaded guilty to a further four, was told by Judge Henry Pownall that he was a menace.

“You have done enormous harm, almost unimaginable harm, to these boys because they did not for a period even know what they were sexually because of you.” Martin, who now walks with the aid of a stick, has committed offences against hundreds of boys and still has a “voracious” sexual appetite, said detectives who arrested him.

“He needs a boy a day,” one of them said.

Martin’s first conviction for a sex offence against a boy was for buggery of a 12-year-old in 1942.

Since then he has received a string of prison sentences, including a term in Dartmoor, for offences against boys.

Martin was variously convicted of or pleaded guilty to offences including buggery, aiding and abetting buggery, and indecent assault.

Charles Wellings, 54, of Hugh Gaitskell House, Stamford Hill, London, was given a total of nine years after being convicted of five offences including buggery, aiding and abetting buggery, and indecent assault.

Brian Howard-Edmonds, 60, of Fortunegate, Harlesden, north London, who pleaded guilty at the start of the six-week trial to six offences including buggery, attempted buggery and indecent assault, was given a total of seven years.

A police surveillance operation, code-named Operation Hedgerow and launched with the co-operation of Brent social services, led to the current trial and also the unearthing by police of what was described as Britain’s biggest boys-for-sex ring.

In February, at the end of a separate trial, four men, one of them a barrister, were jailed for a total of 34 years for involvement in that ring.

The jury in the current trial heard that Operation Hedgerow began with a complaint from a 10-year-old boy.