Ex-coach admits to more child sex abuse

Ex-national trainer James Dougan Watson has served a number of prison terms and suspended jail sentences for molesting boys while running a wrestling club in Lowton.

Watson, who used to live in Beardsworth Drive, Lowton, but whose home is now in Dunstable, Bedfordshire, has pleaded guilty to three charges of indecent assaults on boys in the borough.

The current offences are alleged to have taken place between the beginning of January 1989 and the start of March that year but it has not yet been stated whether they also relate to his wrestling activities.

His case was adjourned and he was remanded on bail until October 12 when he made a brief appearance before Judge Richard Gioserano at Bolton Crown Court.

Watson, now aged 66, was last in the dock at Bolton in July 2017, after he had pleaded guilty to six specimen charges of indecent assault on a wrestling hopeful, when the victim was aged 15 or 16, more than 20 years ago, and he was jailed for 16 months.

Prosecutors said Watson had begun abusing the boy by massaging his legs and body after exercise, using the physical contact as a excuse to brush his arm against his private parts.

Other occasions would see Watson thrusting his groin into the youngster’s face while he performed bench presses.

He later progressed to pulling the boy close to him, while teaching him “relaxation techniques”, and groping and kissing him.

The teenager left his club after Watson abused him while on a competition tour of the United States, when he pulled him close in a hotel room and began rubbing his bottom.

Later the victim, who is now in his late 30s, said his experiences had had such an effect on him that he did not allow his own youngsters to participate in organised sports.

Watson has previously been given a seven-year jail sentence, in 1998, for abusing three boys and raping one of them.

He was given a suspended prison term for indecent assaults on boys aged nine to 14, from the early ’90s, in 2010.

And in 2015 he was jailed for four years after he was found to have engaged in similar behaviour while running wrestling classes in Surrey in the early ’80s.

Watson, who has suffered previously from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and has more recently battled prostate cancer, was said to have “lost everything” after his last conviction.