Wigan man is found guilty of raping and abusing children

Dennis Johnson had denied 21 charges against him including two rapes and 10 indecent assaults of children aged between six and 16.

But after an 11-day trial at Bolton Crown Court, a jury returned guilty verdicts to all the accusations.

The 57-year-old, formerly of Logwood Avenue, Worsley Hall, but now living in Hope Carr Road, Leigh, has now been bailed until he returns before a judge for sentencing on July 1.

The hearing was told that Johnson committed indecent assaults on a girl under 14 years old between January 1991 and December 1992.

He was also convicted of the same offence between January 1992 and December 1995, as well as the rape of a female under the age of 16.

In that same time period he committed another indecent assault of a girl under the age of 14, and four times more between January 1995 and December 1998.

From January 1998 to December 2000, Johnson indecently assaulted a girl under 16 and also raped a girl between January 1998 and December 2007.

Other charges of which he was convicted included gross indecency with a boy under 14 from 1992-1995, as well as two counts of assault on a 12-year-old girl by touching her sexually, between the start of 2016 and September 2019.

Johnson was also found guilty of intimidating a witness or juror, conspiring to pervert the course of justice and causing actual bodily harm.

He had been due to be tried in May last year, but due to the legal system backlog caused by the Covid pandemic, the hearing was delayed by 11 months.

Thank you for reading. We're more reliant on your support than ever as the shift in consumer habits brought about by coronavirus impacts our advertisers. If you haven't already, please consider supporting our trusted, fact-checked journalism by taking out a digital subscription. Thanks again.