How Could You? Hall of Shame-UK, Jane Riches UPDATED
This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.
From Devon, UK, foster mother Jane Riches, 57, “admitted one charge of indecently assaulting the boy after she accepted kissing him passionately when he was still 15 years old.
She was cleared by the jury on five other indecent assault charges in relation to the teenager but may still face jail having earlier admitted four other sex assault charges against a different teenage boy she had fostered.”
“During her trial the twice wed woman said she had sex with the teenager on his 16th birthday and regularly after that. At the time she was married to a soldier.
But Riches, now 57, denied having any sexual contact with him before he was 16 saying all she did was kiss him and hold his hand when they went out walking her dog.
Riches denied five other charges of indecently assaulting her foster son when they lived in Windsor in Berkshire, between October 1988 and 1989 and a jury cleared her on all five counts.
Riches, from Drewsteignton, Devon, had denied the prosecutor’s suggestions that their relationship progressed sexually before they had full sex on his 16th birthday and regularly twice a week after that for two years.
She told the jury: ‘I was very much in love with him. I found myself falling in love with him, and he with me, so I thought. I did nothing sexual with him before his 16th birthday.’
She accused him of making eyes at her after they kissed when he was 15 and before they had intercourse.
She said on his 16th birthday they had been watching a TV film when they started ‘kissing, cuddling, touching and became a bit passionate’.
Riches, who was in her 30s at the time, said: ‘It just boomed, blossomed that night.’
She told the court that the victim, who claimed he was 15 when they first had full sex, was a ‘bit possessive and clingy’ and said their relationship ‘started with a kiss’.
She said they both agreed before anything sexual happened.
She also claimed the youth put his hand up her skirt in a private room at her workplace, touched her thigh and pleasured himself in front of her in her bedroom but said: ‘He was a 15-16 year old horny male. I know I never touched him.’
Riches said she was aware it was illegal to have sex with a boy under 16 and said sex happened spontaneously on his 16th birthday.
She was bailed and will be sentenced later.”
‘I fell in love with foster son and we had sex’: Woman, 57, admits indecent assault on boy, 15
[Daily Mail 4/27/12 by Phil Vinter]
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Riches acted as a foster mother for many years, bringing up children at her home in Drewsteignton, near Exeter, but has now been banned from living or working with young people.
Riches, of Tenantspiece Cottages, Drewsteignton, admitted four offences of causing a young person to engage in sexual activity and one of an indecent assault on a 15-year-old boy.
She was jailed for 12 months, suspended for two years and ordered to receive supervision by judge John Neligan. He banned her from sharing a house with anyone under 18 as a condition of a Sexual Offences Prevention order.
She will also have to sign on the sex offenders register for ten years.
Miss Mary McCarthy, prosecuting, said the first offence was against a 15-year-old boy who Riches had known in Berkshire and then in Devon, where she moved in the 1990s.
She admitted kissing him when he was 15 and having sex with him after he was 16, but that was not an offence at the time.
She went on to have sex more than 200 times with another boy when he was aged 16 to 18 and living in Drewsteigton and she was in her 50s.
On both occasions she believed the relationships were consensual and both parties were in love with each other.
Miss Fiona Elder, defending, said the stress of the case had caused her client physical and mental illness which had delayed her trial and increased the pressure on her.
She said Riches had become involved in the relationships at a time when she was isolated and lonely but that she is now reunited with her husband and living with him.”
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