Kenneth Francis (72) denied 17 offences but a jury found him guilty of all counts after a trial at Chelmsford Crown Court. He has been jailed for 12 years.
The court heard that he assaulted four boys, all under the age of 16.
Francis came to Jersey in the early 1990s to work with St Luke’s Church. He then launched a career as a freelance teacher in the Island. He is believed to have subsequently played the organ at St Mark’s and Grouville churches, before becoming the director of music at the Town Church. None of the offences were committed in Jersey.
Jailing him, Judge David Turner QC said: ‘Behind the facade of competency, respectability and uprightness you hid a dark paedophile inclination which was to blight the life of those boys and leave a profound legacy of psychological damage.’
The attacks happened at the school and at Francis’s then home in Borehamwood between 1972 and 1979, with Francis giving alcohol to some of his victims.
His offending came to light in 2017 when one of his victims reported that Francis had sexually assaulted him.
Jacqueline Carey, defending, Francis later moved to Jersey and for ’30 years or the best part thereof he was a highly regarded man’, adding that there was an ‘absence of offending’ for this period.
She said he lived with his husband in Japan but that there was ‘great uncertainty about whether he will be able to return’ following his conviction.
Francis, of Akasaka in Tokyo, was convicted of 15 counts of indecent assault and two counts of committing an act of gross indecency.
He must also sign the Sex Offenders Register for life and was made subject of a 12-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order, banning him from contact with any boy under 16.
