September 2014
Gym coach admits sexually abusing schoolboys
A GYMNASTICS coach and former teacher has been ordered to register as a sex offender after he finally admitted sexually abusing teenage boys over a period of two decades.
Bruce Gracie had pleaded not guilty at Warwick Crown Court to a total of 27 charges relating to four boys last month.
But at a further hearing his barrister Heidi Kubik asked for 15 of the charges, relating to three of the boys, to be put to him again.
The 67-year-old, of Kings Lane, Newton Regis, then entered guilty pleas to those offences, which it is said took place over a 22-year period between 1974 and 1996 in Chelmsford, North Warwickshire and Tamworth.
The first two offences occurred in Chelmsford in the mid-70s when Gracie, a gymnastics coach and PE teacher, indecently assaulted a boy who was under 14 at the time.
After then working at a school in Telford, Shropshire, where he was alleged to have abused another boy of a similar age in the late 70s, Gracie, who continues to deny those allegations, moved to a school in North Warwickshire.
While at that school in the early 90s he indecently assaulted a boy aged 13 to 15 on five occasions.
He also indecently assaulted another boy, aged under 16, at around the same time. But Gracie continues to deny six charges of having sexual intercourse with that boy from when he was 15.
Accepting Gracie’s pleas, prosecutor Graeme Simpson explained that in relation to those last allegations the boy ‘cannot be sure whether he was 15 or 16’ at the time the incidents began, but they were consensual.
At the time the age of consent for such acts was 18, but it was reduced to 16 in 1997.
And Mr Simpson said: “We take the view it is not in the public interest to continue with these.”
At Miss Kubik’s request, Judge Sylvia de Bertodano adjourned the case for a pre-sentence report to be prepared on Gracie, whom she ordered to register as a sex offender.
Gracie was granted bail with conditions that he has no contact with the four complainants and has no unsupervised contact with any child under the 18, including through social media, and co-operates with the probation service.
