William Woods, the Congleton Paedophile, was convicted of 57 charges at Chester Crown Court on Tuesday, June 24, including inciting minors under 14 to conduct acts of gross indecency, inciting boys aged 13 to 15 to engage in sexual activity, and attempted rape.
Furthermore, he was acquitted of one charge of sexual assault and one charge of neglect.
The 67-year-old resident of Lawton Street, Congleton, has been remanded in custody and is scheduled to be sentenced for his offences on Friday, August 15.
Throughout his eight-week trial, it was revealed that from 1976 to 2006, William Woods had sexually assaulted eight children in the Northwich and Crewe regions of Cheshire.
During his tenure as a football coach, William Woods exploited his relationships with family acquaintances to establish a position of trust and authority over the youngsters, separating them from their families prior to sexually assaulting them.
William Woods additionally incited the youth to exploit one another, gathering many minors to his residence to enact his distorted sexual fantasies.
In addition to his campaign of sexual abuse against these youngsters, William Woods also perpetrated physical torture, as the court revealed that he had confined one of his victims in a cupboard for an extended duration and inflicted burns with cigarettes and a cooking pan.
In 2018, police from Cheshire Police were contacted by one of William Woods’ victims. Further investigations into this victim’s case led officers to discover seven additional victims, all of whom had experienced sexual and physical abuse by Woods from the late 1970s to the early 2000s.
William Woods was interviewed multiple times during the investigation prior to his formal arrest in 2022, categorically denying any allegations of abuse. He asserted to the interviewing officers that he had never encountered several of the victims and claimed that those he had met were fabricating their accounts of abuse.
The 67-year-old individual is set to face 59 charges in January 2024.
Police Constable Emma Hughes, who oversaw the investigation, said:
“While on the outside William Woods looked to be a respectable member of the community; a coach of the local youth football team who had a good relationship with the children of family friends, he is, in reality, a malignant and opportunistic sexual predator who has already served a six-year sentence for sexual offences against young people in his care prior to our investigation into him in 2018.
“Being taken on holidays and camping trips are meant to be experiences that children should look back on with positive memories, but instead, William Woods used the trust instilled in him to abuse the young people in his care, isolate them from their families and force them to act out his warped sexual fantasies over a period of 30 years.
“Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence against him, William Woods refused to accept any responsibility for his own horrific actions. However, their abuser has now, at long last, been served justice and I hope that today marks the end of a very turbulent chapter in their lives that will allow them to find some sense of closure and begin to heal.
“Today’s result is the culmination of over seven years policework and working alongside William Woods’ eight victims in bringing almost three decades of horrific abuse to a conclusion.
“Coming forward to disclose offences of this nature takes a huge amount of bravery. So, I would like to take this opportunity to commend each of the victims in this case whose evidence was vital in helping us build a case against William Woods, as I know it will not have been easy for them or their families to process.
“I would like to stress that, as this case has shown today, we take all reports of historic sexual abuse extremely seriously and we thoroughly investigate every report we receive, placing the victim’s needs at the heart of the case, regardless of how long ago the offence occurred.”
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