This month, jurors in Leicester have had to listen to the appalling crimes committed by a man who people should have been able to trust - a priest.

Here Nic Ridley looks at some of the evidence presented at the trial and at how this paedophile managed to escape detection for so long and gain the trust of the professionals around him that he needed in order to gain access to children in vulnerable situations.

Child psychologist Father Michael Ingram sexually abused youngsters who carried the secret of their ordeals for nearly 30 years.

Altar boys, youth club members and under-privileged children referred by social services, all saw him as a figure of trust.

The now retired Roman Catholic priest, pictured below, abused his position in the church to commit horrific sex crimes against them in the 1970s.

Among his victims was a former altar boy, now in his mid-30s, who told the court the memories of sexual abuse at the hands of Ingram had led him contemplating suicide.

One victim told Leicester Crown Court that Ingram had forced him into sex acts with two other boys and a three-year-old girl.

Another, who is now in his 40s, told how he was molested at Leicester's Holy Cross Priory Church. Two brohers, aged 12 and 13, did not know the other had each fallen victim to Ingram. They were from a broken home, and during the 1970s, joined other boys on a camping trip to the Isle of Wight, supervised by Ingram and two other men.

Weekend trips to a farmhouse at Coston Lodge, near Melton Mowbray, also led to sordid sex sessions.

Graham Buchan, prosecuting, said Ingram had volunteered his services to the Leicester branch of the Family Service Unit. Mr Buchanan said: "He knew that if any abused boys complained, they would not be believed."

Throughout the trial 68-year-old Ingram denied seven sex offences against boys between January 1970 and Decmber 1978.

The Dominican priest insisted that two of his accusers has simply "got the wrong man". He also told the court that he had researched child abuse and campaigned for better treatment of victims to encourage more convictions.

Twenty years ago, he appeared in his local paper, the Leicester Mercury when he denied being a child molesters' champion, insisting that he had no sexual abnormalities and decrying paeodphiles as society's worst criminals.

Back then he told the paper: "Sexual relationships between adults and children cannot be justified and I would not seek to do so. I do not believe that people of different sexual maturities are capable of meaningful relationships.

"As for myself, I am a person who loves children and I have devoted my life to caring for them, but I can assure you that there is nothing in my make-up that would make me a danger to children."

He had been interviewed by the paper after being quoted in the Sunday Telegraph as saying sexual relationships between adults and children were characterised by "gentleness".

He said a child in such a relationship "worships" the adult, behaves seductively and "regularly comes back for more".

The Sunday Telegraph also reported findings from his research as a child psychologist.

He presenting it to a conference in Swansea called Love and Attraction and said a majority of men who had sex with children were in some sort of professional relationship with the boys - social worker, teacher, clergy, choirmaster.

Ingram said he had also discovered that boys who had been abused rarely told their parents.

When subsequently interviewed by the Leicester Mercury, he said that anyone who molested children should be punished because of the harm they caused and that any penalty had to reflect the gravity of the crime.

But he also claimed that children suffered more harm from the legal system following molestation complaints, than from the effects of sexual abuse.

He added: "My concern has mainly been to protect children. The last thing I want is to allow them to be indecently assaulted or for the criminals to escape. People should understand my concern is for the children, not for the molesters."

During his trial he denied he had lobbied for the lowering or abolition of the age of consent and insisted he had been misquoted by newspapers. He claimed he could not demand a correction because he had been gagged by the church.

See also A sickness rooted in our society

See also Church 'appalled' by paedophile

This story was first published in the Leicester Mercury