The evil behind a friendly face...

HE was the highly-respected reverend who led a sinister double life.

To his parishioners, he was a pillar of the community, a family man and father-of-four who led the Sunday service. However, to scores of boys across the country he became a cyber friend who in many cases paid visits to their home and went on to sexually abuse them.

The culmination of his paedophilia was when he raped an 11-year-old boy twice at the victim's home while on police bail as he was being investigated over other sexual offences involving children.

Yesterday, his devious background finally caught up with him when Simon Thomas pleaded guilty to 35 charges relating to the catalogue of abuse.

Depraved Standing in the dock at Southampton Crown Court, ashen-faced Thomas, 44, confessed before a packed gallery of relatives and parishioners how he had downloaded depraved images, forced children to engage in sexual activity with him, asked the youngsters to perform sexual acts over a webcam and raped an 11-year-old boy.

He has now been warned by Judge Jeremy Burford QC that he faces life in jail when he is sentenced next month for his crimes.

Thomas's prolific history only began to unravel after police were contacted by the mother of a 13-year-old Hampshire boy who had been groomed by the callous minister through the Internet.

Detectives working on the investigation codenamed Operation Carson found from interviewing the youngster that Thomas had been unusually honest about himself. Apart from pretending that he was the same age as the child at the outset, he revealed his name, where he lived and eventually his real age and where he worked.

His honesty was to be his downfall in the end.

While on a Boys' Brigade trip to Devon last July, Thomas who had taken his laptop computer with him was arrested by officers from Devon and Cornwall police, on the request of detectives in Hampshire. He was suspended from duties as minister of Hythe United Reformed Church, much to the disbelief of his congregation.

On bail while police continued investigations, which involved analysing the hard drive of the victim's computer, he continued to offend.

Detectives have said that they could not have foreseen how dangerous he would turn out to be.

It was in February this year that Thomas was re-arrested and charged with a catalogue of offences against children and put on remand in jail.

A team of officers based at Hampshire's paedophile unit found that they had an extraordinary case on their hands.

After seizing Thomas's house, which he shared with his wife Jan and four children in Atheling Road, Hythe, detectives spent four days with forensic scientists gathering evidence.

They had taken away his computers as well as samples of clothing and carpet.

Spreadsheets made by Thomas detailing intricate facts of people he had met, chronicled by their age, where they lived, what he knew about them and, in some cases, home addresses and phone numbers, were also taken away. It became clear that Thomas was in contact with more than 1,200 people 800 of whom were under 16.

There were also piles of graphic images which police say were of a sexually-explicit nature involving, in some cases, children.

Det Con Dave Scorey said: "His grooming method was that he put himself up as someone who could help boys who were possibly confused about their sexuality. His regular line would be that age is just a number. It's the person inside that counts'. He just didn't think he was doing anything wrong.

"He spent time putting them at ease with him before starting to push them into meeting up. He would drive all over the country to visit his victims and then after the meetings he would pack his bag and go.

"We had the task of speaking to the parents who had no idea what was going on. They were shocked, it was complete disbelief."

Detectives left parents to broach the subject with their children to try to persuade them to come forward and supply an official statement. Most responded.

At risk "Our priority was to identify the children on the spreadsheet who we deemed most at risk and deal with them first," said Det Con Scorey.

"Getting Simon Thomas remanded was a huge relief because we knew we had time to investigate, safe in the knowledge he was off our streets and therefore not harming anyone else. To this day we are still working our way through those details and we want to get justice for any other potential victims.

"He must have known his day would come. You don't make that many contacts with children without knowing that someone, someday, would say something. The children he groomed and those he abused will have to live with that memory forever and we owe it to them to do whatever we can."

Click on First Page and Second Page to download a pdf of our double page spread first published on July 30th 2006