May 2010 Pensioner sentenced for abuse A pensioner whose first conviction for a sex offence was in July 1960 when he was fined £2 at Plymouth Magistrate’s Court for indecent exposure was today placed on probation for three years and put on the Sex Offenders’ Register for seven years at the crown court in Derry when he admitted three charges of gross indecency with a young girl. William John Roddy, 71, from Queen Street in Derry, committed the offences over a three year period starting in August 2005 when the girl was aged twelve. Judge Desmond Marrinan described Roddy’s behaviour as “bizarre, fanciful and repugnant”. Judge Marrinan was told that Roddy exposed his buttocks to the girl and simulated sex with a naked doll in front of her. There was no physical contact between him and the girl when the offences occurred in Roddy’s bedroom where pornographic photographs were displayed on the walls. Defence counsel Ken McMahon Q.C. said Roddy starting his offending after he’d inherited 31,000. He gave all of the money to young girls, including the victim.  Mr. McMahon said that, a year after the offending started, Roddy withdrew from a medical programme designed to reduce his sexual urges “because he felt he was being offered chemical castration. He is now on treatment to reduce his libido”. Sentencing Roddy, Judge Marrinan said he took into consideration Roddy’s mental and physical wellbeing as well as the fact that, by his admissions, he had spared the teenage girl the “agony of having to give harrowing and distressing evidence”. In addition to putting Roddy on probation for three years for the offences, which carry a maximum jail term of ten years, Judge Marrinan imposed a Sexual Offences Prevention order under which Roddy is banned from unsupervised contact with under eighteen year olds and also banned from frequenting child centred locations. Judge Marrinan said Roddy had a deeply ingrained incorrect attitude to young girls. “You have bizarre fantasies ,” he said. “It appears you had a fantasy about this young girl and befriended her before she had any contact with boys and you kept that friendship going by the sad expedient of giving here money. That is sad and concerning and completely fanciful.”