Man plied girls with drink to abuse them - court

Members of the public gallery at Leeds Crown Court clapped and cheered as George Alan Butterfield was sent to prison for four-and-a-half-years on Friday.

Butterfield, known as Alan, was found guilty of five counts of indecent assault on a girl aged under 16 and two counts of sexually assaulting a child by a jury in March this year.

The jury heard how Butterfield, then living in Windsor Walk, Howden Clough, plied the youngsters, aged around 12 and 13, with drink inside his home and went on to sexually assault them in 2003 and 2004.

The trial heard Butterfield, 63, was often inappropriate around young women, using sexual language and touching their bottoms. Butterfield said he gave young girls alcohol in his home to prevent them getting into trouble on the streets.

One evening one of the girls, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, became so ill from drinking Butterfield said he would assist her. He then went on to commit five acts of indecent assault on her.

Another girl, who also cannot be named, said Butterfield had given her drink and tried to assault her while she slept.

Mitigating, Robin Frieze said Butterfield, who now lives in Horsefair, Pontefract, wasn’t simply a man with no previous convictions, he was a man of ‘positive good character’, working hard at Wakefield Metropolitan District Council for most of his life before he became a publican in Birstall.

“His wife died and he had to give up the pub for that reason,” Mr Frieze said. “He found himself a fairly old single parent in his 50s. He was living in very difficult circumstances.”

Mr Freize said Butterfield had come to terms with the possibility of a prison sentence, though he would find it difficult as he was suffering with angina and type two diabetes, for which he was insulin dependent.

Sentencing, Recorder Alistair MacDonald QC said: “You deliberately plied these young girls with drink to facilitate your sexual abuse of them. You used drink quite deliberately to slow their resistance.”

Recorder MacDonald said the girls’ experience was ‘truly horrific’, and praised them for reporting the abuse and seeing it through to court.

He said: “I commend the very great courage it must have taken to report the offences, going through with it and giving evidence in the convincing manor they did.”

Butterfield was sentenced for three-and-half years for the indecent assault charges and a further 12 months for the counts of sexual activity with a child. He has signed the sex offenders’ register for life and was made subject to a sexual offences prevention order.