The Sussex Paedophile, Meirion Griffiths, a former Church of England priest, was incarcerated for sexual offences committed against a girl and a woman in Sussex during the 1970s and 1980s.
Meirion Griffiths, previously residing on Coachwood Way, Maddington, Perth, Western Australia, received an eight-year prison sentence at Portsmouth Crown Court on February 21.
The 81-year-old, Meirion Griffiths, had been convicted on January 13 after a six-day re-trial, of two counts of indecent assault against a girl then in her late teens in the mid-1970s, one of them involving multiple occasions and two counts of indecent assault against a woman then in her mid-twenties in 1982.
Meirion Griffiths had been found not guilty of two counts of indecent assault, one against each of the women.
All the offences occurred in Chichester or other nearby West and East Sussex locations.
Detective Constable Jo French of Sussex Police said: “This abuse has had a profound impact on both victims ever since.
“Meirion Griffiths, by virtue of his position as local vicar, came to know them quite separately and gained their confidence to abuse their trust in him for his sexual gratification systematically.
“The abuse against the girl only stopped when she moved away, and the abuse against the woman stopped only when Meirion Griffiths left for another parish outside Sussex in 1982.
“Meirion Griffiths eventually emigrated to Western Australia in 1988. There, he was arrested on an extradition warrant in November 2017 as a result of our investigation, and he was finally extradited to the UK in January 2019 to face trial.”
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