A CAR dealer who groomed three boys by taking them on trips to Exmouth and Dawlish is facing jail after being found guilty of abusing them during the 1990s.

David Hargreaves took the boys to amusement arcades and on swimming trips as he won their trust and friendship. He then persuaded the 12 to 15-year-olds to take part in sex acts with him.

He abused two of the boys at a caravan or parked up cabin cruiser at his brother’s garage in Exeter and paid the third to allow him to touch him, leaving him feeling ‘like a prostitute’.

All the boys told their wives or partners about their experiences as they were growing up and the police were alerted by the mother of one of them, who could not face making a complaint at the time.

Two of them who did not know each other both went to the police in 2018 and all three made video recorded interviews which revealed an identical pattern of behaviour by Hargreaves towards each of them.

The boys told of being impressed by being given lifts in a series of smart cars which Hargreaves had access to through his job at his brother’s garage and car lot.

None of them knew that he was already a convicted sex offender at the time he abused them between 1992 and 1997. He had previous convictions for exposing himself to two 11-year-old boys and groping a 13-year-old girl in an empty ice cream hut in Exmouth.

Hargreaves, aged 61, previously of Exeter and Dunsford, but now of Braintree, Essex, denied nine counts of indecent assault or indecency but was found guilty by a jury at Exeter Crown Court.

He was cleared of encouraging two of the three boys to go out stealing car stereos, which he was alleged to have re-sold.

He was remanded in custody and told he would receive an immediate jail sentence by Recorder Mr Philip Mott, KC, who ordered the probation service to assess whether he poses a threat to the public.

He thanked the three victims for their patience in waiting more than three years for the case to come to court as a result of Covid delays.

He said: ‘These are serious offences and there is a risk he would not appear for sentence. The only safe and sensible thing is for him to start the inevitable prison sentence today.

‘It is inevitable there will be a prison sentence, but I don’t know how long it will be at this stage. I have to look at dangerousness. I need to see what needs to be done to protect the public although he is now in his 60s.’

During the trial, the three victims, now adults, all told how they met Hargreaves when he was in his 30s and living in Whipton, Exeter.

Mr Daniel Pawson-Pounds, prosecuting, said: ‘Hargreaves befriended and groomed these boys, each of whom were vulnerable because of difficult domestic circumstances and family lives they were keen to escape.

‘There are very clear and strong similarities in the way he groomed each of them and moved from one to another. Such was his dominance that some of them for a time allowed him to what he wanted and to that extent, they consented.’

Hargreaves denied all the charges and said the boys had got together to concoct them. He said he had never paid them for sex and told the jury ‘I’m not some kind of monster’.