Former Bexhill vicar sentenced for child sex offences

Following a nine day trial, Ifor Whittaker, 73, of Rectory Road, Sutton, previously known as Colin Pritchard, was convicted of and sentenced at Hove Crown Court on Thursday for seven offences against a boy between 25 and 30 years ago, police said.

He was sentenced for two offences of inciting a boy to commit an act of gross indecency, two offences of gross indecency, two offences of buggery, and of conspiracy with another vicar Roy Cotton to commit acts of indecency.

Whittaker is also a former vicar of St Barnabas Church, in Bexhill, but none of the offences relate to his time there.

The court heard that in 2008 Whittaker, then Pritchard, had been sentenced to five years imprisonment after pleading guilty to sexual offences against two young boys whilst he was a vicar in Wellingborough. At that trial he pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to sexually assault one of them with Cotton, and to commit buggery, and those charges were ordered to lie on court file, police said.

As a result of that case he was made a registered sex offender for life and changed his name by deed poll from Pritchard to Whittaker.

This investigation began in 2012 when police followed up information from the Diocese that the victim may have been sexually assaulted by Roy Cotton, then vicar of Brede, who died in 2006, and that Whittaker, a close friend of Cotton, might have been involved.