Men lured boys to Spain

May 24 2008 by Jule Wilson, The Journal

MEMBERS of a paedophile gang were jailed yesterday for a string of child sex offences against vulnerable boys from the North East.

Four men were sentenced at Newcastle Crown Court, after pleading guilty at an earlier hearing, for a total of 17 offences on three boys from Tyneside.

They were committed in Spain, Kent, London and the Northumbria area between December 2004 and December 2007, in what Judge John Evans described as an “altogether horrendous story”.

Middlesbrough-born Peter Melling, 58, who had been living in Spain, and Paul Anthony Bures, 53, from Kent, were both jailed indefinitely.

Melling, convicted of eight counts of sexual activity with a child, was told he must serve at least five years before he could apply for parole.

Bures must serve two years and three months before applying for parole, after admitting sexual activity with a child, inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and possessing indecent images of children.

Derek Marshall, 52, of Melbourne Street, Carlisle, was also jailed for five years for four counts of arranging or facilitating the commission of child sex offences. His son Graeme Marshall, 24, formerly of Ripley Avenue, North Shields, was given a three-year probation order for two counts of the same offence.

The court heard the Marshalls had been befriending boys – one as young as 13 – and introducing them to Melling for a number of years.

Melling would gain the boys’ trust by buying gifts and taking them on trips to retail parks and football matches.

The Marshalls would persuade the boys’ parents they would look after their sons on holidays with Melling at various places in and out of the UK.

The holidays, usually paid for by Melling, included visits to his villa in Torrevieja, Spain, where he would sexually abuse them.

Melling also took some of the victims to his friend Paul Bures’s home in Kent, where they were abused and the offences filmed and put on Melling’s and Bures’s computers.

Sordid email messages between Melling and Bures about their victims were also read out in court.

Melling would get passports for boys and spent 6,579 between October 2003 and December 2006 on flights to Spain for his victims and his adult accomplices.

Amanda Rippon, prosecuting, said: “You can see how much money he was prepared to spend to get the boys to Spain.”

She told the court: “This case revolves primarily around Peter Melling and his association with the other defendants and his systematic grooming and sexual abuse of a group of teenage boys.” Police began investigating Melling when one of the victims’ fathers contacted them, but Melling, suspecting the authorities were on his trail, fled to Spain.

He was eventually deported from Bulgaria in July 2007 on an international arrest warrant and brought back to the UK.

Bures handed himself in to police in October 2007 after his photograph was circulated via Crimestoppers. North Tyneside Detective Inspector Nigel Wilkinson, who led the investigation, said: “The victims were all extremely vulnerable boys and this was a classic case of youngsters being groomed by being bought gifts and taken away on holiday and then subjected to appalling sexual abuse.

“A long and difficult investigation has ensured the safety of children and led to dangerous men being taken off the street.”