October 2004 Pensioner jailed for 1970s sex assaults A Londonderry pensioner whose past caught up with him in a chance encounter with the woman he sexually assaulted as a young girl in the 1970s, was today starting a jail sentence. Noel Samuel Moore, a widower from Seymour Road, pleaded guilty to three specimen charges of indecently assaulting the girl and three specimen charges of indecency towards a child between October 1971 and October 1976, when his victim was aged between nine and 14. Derry Crown Court was told yesterday that Moore had been introduced to the girl through a friend of his who was also a paedophile and who is also thought to have abused her. The accused got into a routine of picking her up from school in his car, assaulting her and then giving her money. His victim, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, had initially gone to the police about Moore’s friend, who had then committed suicide the day after police officers questioned him about sex abuse. The girl did not know enough details about the accused to identify him at the time, but met him through friends years later and confronted him. When he told her he “was young then” she went to the police. Initially, the prosecution said, he had told police he had been “courting her” in his car when she was 14 and he was in his 30s, but later pleaded guilty to all the charges. Passing sentence, Judge Desmond Marrinan said Moore’s victim had suffered “many problems in her life and relationships” which were not to be made public but in which the abuse had been a factor. Moore was sentenced to two and a half years’ imprisonment. The judge further sentenced the defendant to three years’ probation on condition he undertakes a sex offenders’ treatment programme and ordered him to sign the Sex Offenders’ Register for life.