A former Lake District football coach already serving a life prison sentence for sexually abusing junior players has been convicted of molesting another youngster at the same club.
Anthony John Pickering, a 62-year-old ex-army serviceman, was first handed a five-year jail term in 2018 after being found guilty of crimes committed against seven youngsters during the 1970s.
That sentence was later increased to nine years at the Court of Appeal with the Solicitor General concluding that Pickering had robbed multiple victims of their childhood.
In 2020, Pickering was then given a life sentence and ordered to serve a minimum of seven years before being eligible for release, after he was convicted of abuse described by a prosecutor as indiscriminate. Some of this criminal conduct also occurred at the Lakes football club.
Media coverage of court proceedings that year promoted another man to come forward and report that he, too, was sexually assaulted by Pickering around the turn of the 1980s.
Prosecutor Tim Evans told Carlisle Crown Court that he made disclosures while sobbing his heart out in front of relatives. “Blame Tony Pickering for this because he has been in my head,” the man had told family members.
The court heard he was molested in a variety of ways on numerous occasions while of primary school age. That abuse, the man said, had left him feeling dirty and broken and angry.
“I always tried to stop it,” he added, saying of Pickering. “He used to say ‘it is a secret; don’t tell anybody’. At that age you just kind of got on with it.”
Pickering went on trial having denied two charges of indecent assault and one involving an attempted serious sexual assault while aged in his late teens or very early 20s while helping with football training. In evidence he denied any wrongdoing — as he has done persistently throughout all court proceedings.
But today, he was found guilty, unanimously, of all three charges by a jury of six men and six women.
In the absence of Pickering’s lawyer as jurors returned verdicts, Judge Nicholas Barker adjourned the case for a week.
Pickering, previously of Claife Avenue, Windermere, remains in custody and is due to be sentenced for the latest offences next Wednesday, April 17
- Pickering has previously also been handed a lengthy prison sentence for sexually assaulting a young girl in West Yorkshire; and, separately, been convicted of indecently assaulting two boys in Germany during the 1990s while serving with the army.
