Former Telford gym instructor facing more child sex charges

Former Telford teacher Bruce Gracie had been due to be sentenced at Warwick Crown Court for 15 offences relating to his admitted abuse of three boys.

But six further complainants from the Telford area have come forward since Gracie, 67, had made his guilty pleas.

The case was instead listed for mention, and his barrister Heidi Kubik explained that there was a medical note saying Gracie, now of Kings Lane in Newton Regis, near Tamworth, was unfit to attend court.

Mr Graeme Simpson, prosecuting, said: "Since the pleas were reported in the press, further complainants have come forward, all of them in the Telford area.

"He has been interviewed about all except two, and will be interviewed about those two next week, and it is expected he will be charged within two weeks.

"It would perhaps be prudent not to sentence Mr Gracie for the offences he has admitted before we know what's happening about these new matters."

Recorder Adrian Redgrave QC adjourned the case and ordered that it should be listed again for an update on the situation in late January.

Gracie, a former gymnastics coach and PE teacher, had originally pleaded not guilty to a total of 27 charges relating to four boys.

But at a further hearing in September he pleaded guilty to 15 of the charges, relating to three of the boys, which took place between 1974 and 1996 in Chelmsford, north Warwickshire and Tamworth.

The court has heard the first two offences occurred in Chelmsford in the mid-70s and involved a boy who was under the age of 14.

After then working at a school in Telford, where he was alleged to have abused another boy of a similar age in the late 70s, Gracie, who continues to deny those allegations, moved to a school in north Warwickshire.

While at that school he indecently assaulted another boy, aged 13 to 15, in the early 90s. He also indecently assaulted another boy, aged under 16, at around the same time.

But Gracie continues to deny six charges of having sexual intercourse with that boy from when he was 15.

Accepting Gracie's pleas, Mr Simpson had explained that in relation to those last allegations the boy "cannot be sure whether he was 15 or 16" at the time the incidents began, but they were consensual. At the time the age of consent for such acts was 18, but it was reduced to 16 in 1997.

And Mr Simpson said at the September hearing: "We take the view it is not in the public interest to continue with these."