Youth worker Graham Gilmour faces jail over sexual abuse of boys

“You must put your affairs in order,” Judge Gary Burrell QC told Graham Gilmour.

“You are looking at a significant prison sentence.”

Gilmour, 43, had faced 25 charges of sexually abusing the two boys, one a pupil at The Gregg School in Southampton, and the other who attended Lakeside School, a Chandler’s Ford based unit catering for children with behavioural difficulties.

On Friday the jury of six men and six women convicted him of five offences but cleared him of 13 others.

On Monday they returned to Southampton Crown Court to renew their deliberations in the seven outstanding issues.

After retiring for 90 minutes, the foreman said they had found him guilty of five of them but cleared him of two others.

It took them more than more than 12 hours to reach their verdicts, all by a majority of at least 10-2, after a two-week trial.

They had heard how Gilmour had worked as a teaching assistant at The Gregg School where he supported a boy who had been bullied.

Another pupil learnt he was gay and sent him a text because he thought he was like-minded.

Prosecutor Robert Bryant said things progressed from the pair kissing in the library to Gilmour abusing the child in and out of the premises.

He said the boy’s father overheard a conversation between the youth’s friend and his brother and told him the matter should be reported, which is how the police became involved.

Gilmour abused the other boy after a maths lesson at the Lakeside School.

Other acts then took place in the same building and in Gilmour’s car.

In evidence Gilmour strenuously denied the allegations.

In answer to questions from defence barrister Michael Hall, if there was any truth to them, he repeatedly said: “Absolutely not. Not possible.

"I couldn’t ever contemplate doing things like that. It’s not in my thinking. I couldn’t think along those lines.”

He said the boys had made up the claims and he had been the victim of a gay community witch hunt.