April 2023

Sexual predator jailed after abusing 13-year-old victim over several years

The male victim of a sexual predator has spoken out about the physical and mental abuse he suffered at the hands of a former bus driver starting when he was just 13 years of age.

Mark Gadsby, of Cross Side in Ashbourne, singled out the victim when he used to drive the school bus and started grooming him by bombarding the victim with text messages while he was attending school, always wanting to meet up.

Gadsby, who was in his 20s at the time of the attacks, would go on to exploit his position of trust with the victim by giving him lifts in his Ford Fiesta Zetec Sport and on the service bus he drove, eventually taking his vulnerable victim to a country lane in Staffordshire and forcing him to perform sex acts on several occasions.

It wasn’t just down that country lane though, Gadsby would go on to abuse his victim in other locations including public toilets and even at the Ashbourne house he shared with his mother after she’d gone out to go to work.

Those sexual acts left the victim physically in pain for weeks afterwards, but Gadsby would continue to attack his underage victim regardless of the impact he was having on him.

“I do get upset about it still and I just think why did he need to do that?” the victim said in a personal statement.

“It’s just the way of how controlling and overpowering and how frightened he made me feel but why would someone want to do that to someone who’s 13-14 years old.

He was just a big fat sweaty person, no one else would look at him, at 21 years old he should’ve been going out Friday/Saturday nights and doing whatever he possible could, not targeting a 13-year-old.”

The abuse wasn’t just physical either with Gadsby grooming the victim and threatening to tell others about the abuse, as if the victim were to blame.

The victim has been forced to live with the impact of the abuse for many years before finally coming forward, ruining his teenage years, and continuing into his adult life.

Appearing at Derby Crown Court, Gadsby admitted the charges of one count of buggery, six counts of gross indecency with a boy under sixteen and two indecent images offences after a number of indecent images of children were found on his mobile phone.

The 41-year-old was jailed for a total of six years on Monday 3 April, given a Sexual Harm Prevention Order and ordered to sign the Sex Offender’s Register for life.