AUGUST 2000 Paedophile is sent to prison Paedophile William Porter, aged 47, of Heathfield Terrace, Plumstead, was convicted of molesting three girls, one as young as six, during a 21-year reign of terror. Blackfriars Crown Court heard how Porter, who once taught at St Mary’s Roman Catholic primary school in Woolwich, would force the girls to perform vile sex acts on him when he baby-sat them. His youngest victim’s father told the News Shopper: “We thought the sentence should have been longer, but the judge did what he could within the law. I wasn’t expecting him to get life, or even very long. Paedophiles nowadays just get good prisons and a cushy life. “But how does five years make up for more than 20 years of pain and torment?” Porter began his spree of abuse in 1977, by molesting an 11-year-old girl who is now aged 35. His second victim, now aged 26, was molested when she was just seven and the third victim was aged 11 when she was abused. She is now 14. The three girls, who cannot be named for legal reasons, were so traumatised by the ordeal that one attempted to kill herself twice and the others have moved to different parts of Britain. Porter, who retired from teaching in 1996 after being diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, had not molested any of his students, the court heard. Sentencing, Judge Richard Walker said: “I have no hesitation whatever in categorising you as a paedophile. “The long-term effects and the distress to the girls was clear to me from the manner of them giving evidence. “The pattern of offences and the breach of trust make it appropriate for your conduct to be characterised as serious child sex abuse. “It makes you in my view a continuing danger to young girls.” Porter was also ordered to register as a sex offender indefinitely.