March 2014
Notorious paedophile who preyed on the late Rab C Nesbitt star has died before facing further child abuse charges
Paedophile Francis Currens pictured above
A NOTORIOUS paedophile who preyed on the late Rab C Nesbitt star Eric Cullen has died before facing further child abuse charges.
Former scout leader Francis Currens, 62, was set to appear in court after another victim came forward to say he abused her when she was a child, 40 years ago.
The vile pervert – a member of one of Scotland’s worst paedophile gangs – was jailed for 14 years in 1994 after admitting a series of offences against nine boys.
And he faced court again after a woman said he preyed on her in 1974.
But it has emerged he died in Glasgow’s Southern General Hospital in December, suffering multiple organ failure after an illness.
The Crown Office said Currens had been charged last May with sex offences from 1974.
A spokesman added: “Due to the death of the accused, the case is now closed.”
Currens, a former Territorial Army soldier from Springboig, Glasgow, was brought to justice 20 years ago.
When the Hamilton home of Cullen – who played Rab C Nesbitt’s son Wee Burney in the hit BBC comedy – was raided by detectives in 1993, he told police about years of abuse and Currens was arrested.
Victim: Eric Cullen as wee Burney
Throughout his childhood Cullen had been bullied, beaten and blackmailed into taking part in sex acts.
When Currens was jailed in 1994, Lord Mayfield said: “I regard you as an utterly depraved person.”
Jail did not reform Currens. In 2002, inside information at Peterhead Prison alleged that he and others were plotting to set up a toy shop as a lure for young children when they were released.
The list of Currens’s prison associates reads like a Who’s Who of Scottish sex offenders.
Cullen died, aged 31, from complications after a bowel operation in 1994.
Last night, one of Currens’s victims, now 45, said: “He was a waste of oxygen and there isn’t a person alive who would regret that he has died.
Victim of Abuse - Four-foot Eric Cullen, who played Wee Burney in Rab C Nesbitt, was a troubled young man
Cullen was sexually abused by a violent paedophile ring as a teenager, and since his condition meant that he looked much younger than he was, this abuse continued into his twenties. Throughout Cullen’s childhood, a man called Francis Currens had beaten, bullied and blackmailed him into sex acts. Not just with him, but with other paedophiles. Police arrested Currens at his home in Springboig, Glasgow, and he was charged with abusing 20 boys. He was jailed for 14 years in 1994 for abusing nine of those boys but Wee Burney didn’t see justice done. Once he became a successful actor, his abusers returned to extort money with menaces. As a result he developed severe clinical depression
Arrest
He was drawn to police attention by an informant, another victim, in July 1993, but it was Cullen’s home which was raided by detectives.
At the television actor’s house, they seized a large quantity of pornographic video material – an operation which was inexplicably publicised by the police in a complete departure from accepted Scottish practice in criminal arrest matters.
Cullen always maintained that the homosexual pornography involving children was not his but that Killian Coughlan had forced him to keep it. That always had a ring of truth since homosexual paedophiles such as Killian Coughlan are known to be adept at planning ahead against the day when they are caught.
In the event, Cullen’s evidence helped indict Currens, who is now serving a 14-year sentence in Peterhead prison. Because of the enormous publicity, Cullen had suffered near-terminal damage to his television and stage career and, as the police trawled through the pornography, they inevitably found material which pointed to a greater involvement by the star.
The procurator-fiscal refused to accept that Cullen’s part had been solely as a victim and four indecency charges sealed his fate. The charges were not by any means at the top end of the scale of seriousness, so there was shock and amazement when the sheriff at Hamilton swept aside the defence plea and all the supporting evidence and imposed a nine-month prison term.
A shattered Cullen was led away to Barlinnie Prison, where anxious officers ensured his safety by keeping him under surveillance in the prison hospital. A shameful episode was brought to a close by the Appeal Court which quashed the jail term and substituted the probation which should have been imposed in the first place.
Cullen was by then utterly broken and tending towards suicide. That he was saved from this course is a tribute to the McFarlan family and their close circle of friends. McFarlan always believed Cullen pleaded guilty to the indecency charges because he was sick of the heartbreak and close to breakdown.
He wanted it over and done with so he could try to start again, to resurrect his television career.
He was close to returning to something like his old self in recent months. Neighbours had remarked that he was regaining his old cheerfulness and openness. He was also on the verge of getting the breaks he needed to climb again to his star status, until the curse bequeathed him by fate at birth struck again.
Child campaigner
Once the court case was out of the way Cullen dedicated himself to campaigning against child pornography, and to trying to bring his abusers to justice. Of the three men he named as his principal abusers one, Francis Currens, was jailed during Cullen’s lifetime; one, Cullen’s uncle Jack Williams, was jailed after his death (both of them for a catalogue of offences including the repeated rape of young boys); and as of summer 2006 one, whom Cullen named as the ringleader, has never been prosecuted – or even seriously investigated.
Cullen’s arrest in 1993, followed by a long drawn-out police investigation and the persecution by the press, destabilised his mental defences leaving him suicidal for many months. As soon as his prison sentence had been quashed on appeal, he began to be offered acting parts again, but he was still too ill with severe Post traumatic stress disorder to resume work.
Death
Only a day or two before his fatal heart attack, which followed on from surgery for a twisted bowel, he had been asked to take up the role of Wee Burney again. He was however in two minds as to whether to resume his acting career or become a Clinical Psychologist specialising in the treatment of abuse victims; he already had a BA in psychology, and had been accepted to begin a more advanced course in Forensic Psychology that autumn
April 1998
BURNEY’S PERVERT UNCLE GETS 7 YEARS
The pervert uncle of Wee Burney star Eric Cullen was jailed for seven years yesterday.
Cullen unmasked gay paedophile Jack Williams, 65, before dying aged just 31.
The tiny Rab C Nesbitt actor told police Williams molested him with two other perverts.
Williams never faced trial for preying on Cullen, who blamed his own jail sentence for possessing child porn on the abuse he suffered as a lad.
But thanks to Cullen’s evidence, the pensioner was convicted of abusing three other boys.
As Williams began his sentence, Cullen’s mum Mary, 60, and dad Eric, 65, accused him of “torturing” their son.
Mary said: “Eric can rest in peace now.
“He was brave enough to name Williams and the other men who ruined his childhood and his life.
“We always thought Eric would be safe with his uncle Jack. How wrong we were.
“Williams was a Scout leader and a member of the Congregational Church. He took a boys’ football team and appeared to be a normal, caring father.
“Only now do we know he was destroying the lives of these children with his sickening activities.”
Cullen’s close pal, sports presenter Bill McFarlan, said he was disgusted Williams had never been charged with abusing the shamed star.
He added: “Eric was jailed while Williams and others who raped and abused him walked around free.”
McFarlan said the child porn Cullen was jailed for hoarding had been “dumped” on him by his boyhood abusers.
Williams denies abusing Cullen.
At the High Court in Glasgow, Lord Johnston told Williams he’d committed monstrous crimes which left the victims deeply scarred.
He said Williams had shown no remorse.
Williams admitted abusing the three boys years before dumping his wife for a gay lover.
The offences dated back to 1974. One lad was molested on a camping trip.
The court heard one victim’s marriage had fallen apart because of what he suffered as a child.
Norman Ritchie, defending, said Williams was a man with two faces.
He added: “One was a respectable public face of a man with a good work record, who had done his National Service and was involved in religion.
“The other, hidden, face was of a man who discovered he was homosexual 20 years ago, at a time when this was not tolerated.”
Former steel worker Williams, of Highfield Crescent, Motherwell, Lanarkshire, will be placed on the national register of paedophiles.
Social workers say he could still be a risk to children.
Mr Ritchie insisted the danger was “minimal” because of Williams’ age, poor health, and the fact he’d been with the same boyfriend for six years.
Cullen was jailed for nine months in 1995 after police found a huge stash of child pornography at his home.
He served 15 days in Barlinnie prison before the sentence was branded “inappropriate” by appeal judges and reduced to probation.
Cullen died of a heart attack less than a year after his release.
He had told police how Williams passed him on to a paedophile friend, scout master Frank Currens.
Currens was later caged for 14 years for vile sex acts against boys.
