Former Portsmouth teacher and Waterlooville scoutmaster spared jail for abusing boy, 12

Former Waterlooville scoutmaster and teacher Gary Coy, 65, groomed, isolated and abused the 12-year-old boy, rubbing his body and genitals when he had him alone.

Prosecutor William Sneddon said Coy repeatedly touched the 12-year-old schoolboy who felt ‘unwell and nauseous’ at his actions in the late 1980s.

The boy said Coy ‘pulled’ him close and ‘asked if it was okay’ and started ‘rubbing my chest’ before touching him intimately.

‘I knew it was wrong but I didn’t understand what was happening,’ the victim said in a statement.

‘I couldn’t work out what was going on. I felt like it was happening to someone else.

‘In my head I thought I needed to get help.’

After the abuse Coy was ‘crying and apologising,’ the boy said. He added: ‘I tried to blank it out.’

In a victim statement, the man said: ‘The incident has had a massive impact on my life.’

He suffered from difficulties in forming relationships and alcohol abuse.

The man added: ‘The incident is never going to go away, and affects everything.’

The court heard Coy had been jailed in 1995 for nine charges of indecent assaults against young boys.

At the time he confessed to 23 other offences but ‘forgot’ about the 12-year-old boy in the latest prosecution.

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Following his release he was prosecuted in April 2009 for two indecent assaults against boys under 14 in 1973 and handed a community rehabilitation order.

But he was freshly investigated in 2019 over the abuse of the child in the latest case, and pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting him earlier this year.

HGV driver Coy, a former teacher at Priory School in Portsmouth and Crookhorn School, was handed a two-year jail term suspended for two years.

He must complete 30 days’ rehabilitation activities and sign the sex offenders’ register for 10 years.

Sentencing, judge David Melville QC said it would be ‘unjust’ and ‘going too far’ to jail him now.

He told Coy: ‘You behaved in a disgraceful way. You groomed this child aged 12 and it’s quite obvious that was your plan.’

He added: ‘You assaulted him sexually in a way which has caused him untold harm and damage ever since.’

Coy must pay £5,000 compensation to the victim.

Keely Harvey, for Coy, said he knew at the time of his first court case he had ‘disturbing behaviour’ and would ‘almost try and justify it to himself’.

But he put that behind him, completed courses in jail and there have been no further incidents, she said.

Coy, of Snellgrove Close, Calmore in Southampton, cares for his elderly sister and has been working for 20 years, she said.

In 1995 The News reported one abused boy’s father said Coy had ‘manipulated him, and destroyed his life’.

Community leaders at the time said Coy ‘appeared to lead a double life’ as he was a ‘dedicated’ scoutmaster but secretly preyed on children.

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