Jail for priest who abused brothers

A Catholic priest who groomed two teenage brothers for sex abuse in church and at the victims' home was jailed for four years today.

William Hofton, 47, was arrested only a year after being allowed back to work as a priest after admitting an earlier sex offence.

Today Hofton pleaded guilty to seven charges of gross indecency and nine counts of indecent assault between 1991 and 1993.

On one occasion Hofton abused the elder boy in the organ loft of a church in Covent Garden, and another time in a church in Wood Green, Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court heard. The two victims, now aged 28 and 26, were in court today. They had come forward after Hofton admitted sexually abusing a 17-year-old boy in 1986, who did not press charges.

When this attack came to light in 2002, the church's child protection team sent Hofton for an independent assessment, which found he was "low risk" and he was allowed to return to work in Kentish Town. Last December he was arrested for the previously undisclosed offences against the brothers. Hofton burst into loud sobbing when the court heard he had claimed he "loved them both dearly".