December 1998
Former rent boy jailed for child abuse
A FORMER rent boy who sold himself to sailors was jailed for 10 years yesterday.
Grandfather Reginald Carruthers, 59, admitted serious sex offences against teenage girls.
His lawyer told the High Court in Edinburgh that Carruthers’ brutal childhood had driven him to become an abuser.
“It was about absolute power and control over children. He wanted that power,” said advocate Niall McCluskey, defending.
The lawyer went on to tell Lord Cullen how, as a boy, Carruthers had lived in Leith with his parents.
Three sisters and seven brothers shared two rooms.
Carruthers was regularly punished and abused by his sadistic father while his drunken prostitute mother worked at the docks, or spent time with the two regular boyfriends she had on the side
