Paedophile pensioner spared any punishment for seven sex offences


AN 80-year-old paedophile has walked free from court without punishment after committing seven sex offences against children decades ago.
A sheriff made no order against David Cashford after reading a series of reports which found he suffers from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Cashford was previously found unfit to stand trial in front of a jury after an examination of facts before Sheriff Simon Pender in June.
Sheriff Pender had concluded he was satisfied “beyond doubt” that Cashford carried out all of the acts he was charged with.
He was found to have committed offences between June 1972 and November 1985 involving six young boys, one of whom has since died, and one young girl, all aged between seven and 14 years of age at the time.
The offences took at a house in Dumbarton and within a car in the Dumbarton area.
When Cashford, who now lives in the Kinning Park area of Glasgow, returned to court last Tuesday, Sheriff Pender made “no order” to punish him for his behaviour.
The pensioner was also not put on the sex offenders’ register after his lawyer said Cashford was incapable of complying with its requirements.
Defence agent Brian McGuire said: “There is also an inadequacy in the Act for him to comply with the Sex Offenders Register as he is not capable of knowing what the requirements are.”
Sheriff Pender ruled that his only options were to impose a guardianship order or make no order at all, and decided to make no order, bringing the case to an end with no punishment.
At the hearing in June, one of Cashford’s victims, now a 49-year-old man living in Glasgow, told the court how he was forced to watch pornography on television at Cashford’s house when he was either 11 or 12 years old.
The man said: “I made my excuses and left pretty quickly. I only told one person about it, but finally gave a statement to police in 2017.”
Another victim, who is now aged 48, told the hearing: “He touched me on my trousers, then unbuttoned and unzipped my trousers and carried out sex acts. This became a regular occurrence as he was regularly baby-sitting me.”
A 45-year-old woman told how Cashford had sexually assaulted her when she was just nine years old.
Sheriff Pender found all seven of the charges against Cashford proved. He concluded that the acts would have constituted a crime if Cashford had been fit to stand trial.