Survivor ended decades-long silence after song reminded him of horrific sexual abuse he endured as child
“I’ve carried this all that time”
A sexual abuse survivor finally ended his silence, after a song which reminded him of the ordeals he endured as a child led him to confide in his wife.
The survivor, now a grandfather, was just a young boy when Roy Groves subjected him to a campaign of cruelty, involving three different types of sexual abuse.
He carried the burden of the abuse alone for more than four decades until Christmas time 2024, when his wife caught him crying on their bed, Sheffield Crown Court heard.
The survivor, who is entitled to lifelong anonymity, broke down after hearing the song “Spirit in the Sky,” which he associates with Groves’ abuse.
Prosecutor Andrew Bailey said that after the survivor disclosed the abuse to his wife, she contacted the police, leading to Groves’s arrest.
Groves, now aged 65, admitted charges of buggery of a boy under 13, gross indecency and inciting a boy under 13 to commit gross indecency at an earlier hearing.
In a gut-wrenching statement read to the court, the survivor said the toll of the abuse has “ripped my insides out”.
“I’ve carried this all that time,” he said.
Jailing Groves for nine years, the judge, Recorder Richard Thyne KC, told him: “You abused him in different ways, often on the same occasion…you hurt him. He would cry while you were doing it.”
Recorder Thyne also made Groves the subject of a one-year extended licence, bringing his total sentence to 10 years.
These proceedings mark the third time Groves has been convicted of child sexual offences, the court heard.
In 2023, the same judge, Recorder Thyne, sentenced Groves to 20 months’ custody for three counts of gross indecency with a child.
More than 20 years earlier, in 2001, Groves, of Sheldon Avenue, Conisbrough, Doncaster, received a three-year community rehabilitation order for offences of gross indecency with a child and indecent assault.
When reaching the appropriate level of sentence, Recorder Thyne said he had taken mitigating factors such as Groves’ intellectual disability, along with contemporary sentencing guidelines for offences such as buggery which would now be charged as rape, into consideration.
He also granted a restraining order, made Groves the subject of a 15-year sexual harm prevention order, and told him he must remain on the sex offenders’ register for life.