Former Bristol teacher jailed for third time for child sex abuse

A former teacher and youth football club chairman with a track record of years of child abuse in the Bristol area is still a ‘committed, calculating and dangerous paedophile’, despite now being 72 and living on a caravan park in west Wales.

Christopher Flavin, who has already served two long sentences in prison in the past two decades, has been jailed again, this time for 10 years, with an extra five years supervision after that.

Flavin has six previous convictions for 33 offences and the prosecutor said his record "establishes beyond reasonable doubt that the defendant is nothing other than a committed, calculating, and dangerous paedophile".

Flavin’s most recent offending occurred in 2023 when he was living in Carmarthenshire, Swansea Crown Court has been told. The court heard he groomed and repeatedly sexually assaulted a schoolboy, asked the child for intimate photographs, and got the youngster to perform a sex act on himself while he filmed it.

Tom Scapens, prosecuting, said the abuse was reported to police officers who searched Flavin's property and found a mobile phone which contained more than 300 indecent images. Officers also found internet searches had been made on the device related to children including "pre-teen boy laying on a French beach" and "10-year-old boy black model".

The court heard Flavin then blamed his young victim claiming the boy was hypersexualised and sexually promiscuous and claiming the boy was a "prolific liar" who needed psychiatric help. The prosecutor said Flavin then sought to obstruct the progress of the case by repeatedly failing to attend court via videolink or refusing to engage unless he had first spoken to his solicitor when in fact he had no legal representation.

He said guilty pleas were eventually entered to some charges but others were denied and went to trial in May this year which the defendant did not attend. He said Flavin then failed to attend a number of post-conviction hearings.

In an impact statement which was read to the court the boy said he feels "sad and angry" when he thinks about what Flavin did and that he suffers nightmares. The child added: "I hope he never has the chance to do this to anyone again."

Flavin was an art teacher at Monks Park School in Southmead in Bristol for 26 years before leaving in 2003. Then living in Portishead, he had also been a coach and chairman at Gordano Valley Giants FC for many years in the 1980s and 90s. He was arrested in October 2005 after two young men came forward to tell police of sex abuse they suffered as boys, and Flavin was eventually jailed in September 2007 for almost seven years.

He was released from prison and went to live in Spain, and when further allegations from another boy abused back in the 1980s were reported, he had to be extradited back to the UK to face those charges. In November 2015, he was jailed for more than four years for that abuse, which took place from 1984 to 1988.

After he was released from that sentence, he went to live in west Wales, and had an address at a caravan park in Crickhowell, Powys, when he was arrested again - this time for more recent child sexual abuse.

The court in Carmarthen heard Flavin also has convictions for breaching a sexual harm prevention order by entering the grounds of Crickhowell High School and going to a children's play park in Pembroke Dock and for possession of indecent images. The images offending came to light when staff in a branch of Timpson saw him printing sexualised material involving children on a public printer.

Flavin was unrepresented when he appeared in court. When asked by Judge Geraint Walters if there was anything he wanted to say the defendant said he said he wouldn't agree with a lot of what the prosecution barrister had just said but "there's nothing I can do about [it]". He said his only real interest in life were his animals and without them "I have no real interest in carrying on".

Judge Walters told the defendant he had "spent a lifetime grooming and abusing" defenceless and impressionable young boys and said despite his advancing years that offending behaviour had continued. He noted Flavin had been handed two lengthy custodial sentences and been made the subject of sexual harm prevention orders and suspended sentences over the years but nothing had deterred him.

The judge said he had read the pre-sentence report on the defendant which made it clear there was no real remorse on the part of Flavin and made it clear that he sees himself as the victim. He said the report concluded the defendant should be categorised as a dangerous offender in the meaning of the legislation and he said that was a conclusion he endorsed.

This time Flavin was made the subject of a 15-year extended sentence comprising 10 years in custody followed by a five-year extended licence period. The defendant must serve two-thirds of the custodial element of the sentence before he can apply to be released but it will be up to the Parole Board to determine if he is safe to be let out. Flavin will be a registered sex offender for the rest of his life and remains subject to indefinite sexual harm prevention orders.