June 2000

Care worker who seduced boys loses her appeal

A CARE worker who seduced boys as young as 12 for sex has been told she must remain behind bars and serve her five-year prison sentence.

Appeal Court Judges have thrown out a bid by child molester Carolyn Bromiley to cut her jail term, imposed for “preying” on vulnerable youngsters at a Cheshire residential school.

Formerly from Callands, 37-year-old Bromiley was caged in January, after confessing to committing 10 indecent assaults on young boys over a 15-year-period.

While her counsel, Michael Davies, observed that all the boys involved had been “willing participants”, the law lords remarked that sexual abuse in care homes was of “acute public concern.”

Rejecting her appeal, Lord Justice Rose said: “These victims were in no sense criminal delinquents, they were in a residential home because they had learning difficulties.

“Those of either sex who are in a position of trust and responsibility in such homes must expect to go to prison for a substantial period if – in breach of that trust and taking advantage of that responsibility – they prey sexually on those in their care.

“In our judgement it is quite impossible to say that five years was manifestly excessive or wrong in principle.”

It was claimed that Bromiley, who was of previous good character, had problems in maintaining mature relationships and had a string of failed relationships with men.

But she was not motivated by “predatory or sadistic desires”, observed the judge.

In one case Bromiley had sex with a 13-year-old then pursued him with love poems.

Another time she bedded a 12-year-old boy then warned him not to tell anybody what had happened.

Passing sentence at Warrington Crown Court earlier this year, Judge David Hale described the case as “the worst case of a woman abusing boys that any court had had to face.”

The court heard then that Bromiley had groomed the boys for sex, carried out at either live-in accommodation for carers or at the school.

Bromiley was supposed to act as a “mum” to the youngsters while they were away from their families – but the ordeal had left the boys with “a legacy of distress”.

For the offences, which were committed between January 1984 and April last year, she must remain on the Sex Offenders’ Register for the rest of her natural life.

She was cleared of one indecent assault charge after a trial and denied six other similar offences, which were ordered to lie on the file.