September 2014
Ex-Tory branch chairman guilty of child sex offences
A former branch chairman for the Folkestone and Hythe Conservative Association hid a “dark secret” – he was a sick paedophile, it has been revealed.
Angus Burgoyne posed online as ‘James Beevers’ to exchange perverted child sex fantasies and then downloaded vile images of children.
Now the 41-year-old father-of-two is facing a lengthy period behind bars after a jury has convicted him of three sex attacks on children.
Burgoyne, who is pictured standing next to MP Damian Collins at a branch event, formerly lived in New Road, Elham, but has since grown a beard and moved to Melbury Osmond in Dorset.
Prosecutor Simon Taylor had told the jury that Burgoyne was “a brazen liar” and a pervert who molested children before being arrested and questioned in 2012.
Police officers seized his computer and a forensic examination revealed he had downloaded more than 1,500 images of children.
The Canterbury Crown Court jury heard how four of the images depicted children involved in sadism and many others were of children and adults involved in sex.
The prosecutor said the warped Burgoyne had also created another online profile called ‘Matthew Keeping’ in August 2012.
Burgoyne, who admitted eight downloading and distributing image charges but denied the sex assaults, claimed his child victims had lied.
He told police: “It didn’t happen. It really… I mean… I don’t… to think I’d do something like that… it makes me feel sick and I just really don’t know what to say to be perfectly frank.”
Mr Taylor told the jury: “She (one of the child victims) struck lucky, you may think. She would never have known that the defendant had a collection of child pornography on his computer – still less the victim would have realised that the police would seize his computer during the course of their investigation.”
He added that if the victim had lied it would have been to frame Burgoyne for sex offences.
Mr Taylor added: “So, for the defendant to be innocent, this must have been a pure shot in the dark by the victim.
“Pure coincidence, pure fortune that the person she decided to frame just happened to have a perverted interest in children, a dark secret that she could never have known about.”
The jury believed the children and convicted Burgoyne on all three sex assaults.
Judge Heather Norton remanded him in custody for the preparation of reports and he will be sentenced next month.
