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A former Teesside magistrate has been jailed for a string of sex assaults on two teenage boys.

Gulbag Singh used to live in Thornaby and worked for several charities, as well as serving as a magistrate at the Middlesbrough court.

He carried out the assaults, including one rape, after moving from Teesside to Coventry.

Warwick Crown Court heard how Singh met his first victim’s family at a religious festival in Bedworth some years ago before subjecting the teenager to various sex assaults in around 2015.

Prosecutor Glyn Samuel said it was Singh’s other victim who first said anything, and which last year led to the police becoming involved.

He told his mother of two incidents when Singh had touched him indecently. She confronted Singh who claimed nothing had happened.

But when the mother, who was recording the conversation on her phone, said she was going to call the police, he told her: “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

“I can’t help it. I hate myself. I’m a dirty man.”

Police were contacted and, during the investigation, officers spoke to the first victim.

When questioned, Singh claimed it had been consensual after he had realised the teenager had ‘gay tendencies’.

At court he pleaded guilty to charges of rape and sexual assault

Derek Johashen, defending, said: “He has been involved in the charitable sector for many years, and he has been trying to understand what made him behave in the way he did.”

Mr Johashen said Singh, whose online profile describes him as a case manager with Macmillan Cancer Support, had been looking at getting counselling.

A spokesperson for Macmillan Cancer Support said: “We are shocked to hear about the case of Gulbag Singh.

"He was not employed by Macmillan but was previously associated with us through one of our partner organisations in the Midlands.”

Mr Johashen said: “He now thinks the only person who can counsel and heal the problems in his own life is him.”

“He has said throughout he wants to express his remorse.”

In 2004, the Evening Gazette reported that Singh was a magistrate who worked for the Stockton Advice and Guidance Centre and joined the board of Tristar Housing as an independent director.

On his Linkedin page, Singh states he was the “youngest lay magistrate (Justice of Peace) to join the Teesside Magistrate courts.”

Singh, now of Richmond Terrace, Northampton, was jailed for eight years and four months. The 47-year-old was also ordered to register as a sex offender for life.

Judge Sally Hancox told him: “You have pleaded guilty to a number of significant sexual offences.

“Whatever difficulties or urges you realised you were experiencing, you must have known the last place you should have sought to live out those urges was with them.

“The rape is the most serious offence I have to deal with you for today.

“You have behaved in an unacceptable and appalling way. These offences have had a profound effect on both young men.”

“But you are a man of previous good character. You were a good man, a hard-working man working in the charitable sector.

“Each of these offences took place over a relatively short period of time, but that does not take away from the physical and emotional impact it will have had on your victims.”