THE Queen’s former choirmaster was jailed yesterday for five years for sexually assaulting children.
Jonathan Rees-Williams, 55, served the Royal Family as organist and master of the choristers at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle.
But in 2003 allegations of sexual abuse involving children and young people earlier in his career surfaced and he stepped down from his post.
A police investigation uncovered incidents involving male and female victims over 14 years from the mid-1970s.
Five men and one woman came forward to relive their childhood experiences before a jury in June and he was convicted of 18 separate charges of indecent assault.
Advertisement
After the trial it was revealed that police had also found 127 indecent images of children on Rees-Williams’s two computers and, following the jury’s unanimous verdict, he pleaded guilty to one charge of possessing indecent images of children.
Judge Jonathan Playford QC sentenced Rees-Williams at Reading Crown Court to five years for the indecent assaults plus a further three months, to run consecutively, for possessing the indecent images. Passing sentence, the judge said that Rees-Williams, from Bristol, had “fallen from the top to the bottom of society” and that his crimes were “deplorable and offensive to the public”.
The judge told him that he had “grossly and flagrantly” betrayed the trust of parents and children who went to him for their musical education.
Rees-Williams, who held musical posts in Salisbury and Lichfield cathedrals, had used “the awe, not to say fear” that his victims held him in to ensure their “compliance and their silence”.
The judge also told Rees-Williams that on his release he would be banned from working with children indefinitely and placed on the sex offenders’ register.
Advertisement
The jury heard how he had abused his victims in an organ loft, a church undercroft, his home, while travelling on coaches and even on a train. None of the assaults related to his time at Windsor.
Rees-Williams admitted five counts of indecent assault involving two boys but denied a further ten counts, also involving male victims, and three charges involving a girl.