Architect jailed for "tramp" sex attacks

LONDON, Sep 18 (Reuters) A senior council official who dressed as a tramp to sexually assault six teenage girls was jailed for 13 years today.

Anthony De Boise, 58, from Surrey, had pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court to indecently assaulting the girls, aged from 13 to 16, between 1989 and 1996.

De Boise, an architect who worked as a planning officer for Wandsworth council in southwest London, threatened several of his victims with a knife during his reign of terror.

In one case, he wished a 14-year-old victim ''happy birthday'' when she told him she would soon be 15.

The married father-of-two wore a dirty tracksuit and trainers and disguised his voice during the assaults.

The lunchtime attacks took place at beauty spots within 20 miles of his 500,000 pound house in the picturesque Surrey village of Holmbury St Mary, near Dorking. Three were in Hinchley Wood, Surrey.

''These attacks have had a catastrophic effect on our families,'' the victims said in a statement released by the Metropolitan Police. ''He has taken so much away from us.

However, today he has lost. We move on as best we can.'' De Boise remained at large while police followed up descriptions of a suspect who looked like a ''down-and-out''. An appeal on the BBC's Crimewatch programme failed to lead police to him.

He was finally arrested in February this year following a police review of unsolved sexual assaults.

A sample of De Boise's DNA, taken from him during a separate police inquiry into a theft allegation, matched samples taken at the scenes of two attacks.

One victim, aged 24, said the attack had shattered her family's lives.

''I really didn't want to go to school any more,'' she said.

''We had to move schools twice and eventually move away miles from the area. Even now I still don't ever go out walking by myself.

''It affected my mum the worst. She's been really ill over the last 10 years since it happened.'' De Boise will remain on the sex offenders' register indefinitely.

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