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A paedophile who pushed a boy off a 100ft cliff to stop him revealing he was raping a girl has been jailed.
Anthony Stocks, 54, launched a calculated plan to kill the 10-year-old boy by taking him over a series of cliffs in Ovingdean in September 2022, leaving his victim with lifelong injuries.
The fall was initially thought to be accidental, but an investigation revealed Stocks did it to cover up three years of horrific child abuse.
While living at an address in east Oxfordshire between 2019 and 2022, he repeatedly subjected a young girl to rape and multiple sexual assaults.
After she confided in the young boy, who made concerted efforts to stop Stocks from committing crimes, he hatched his plan to murder the young man.
He had previously taken him to a quarry but changed his mind, deciding later that year to take the boy to see Chelsea Football Club and then to Ovingdean Cliff. Stocks had also told his female victim he intended to push the boy, who suffered multiple serious injuries.
Emergency services airlifted the boy to St George’s Hospital in London, where he suffered multiple fractures and a lacerated spleen and kidney.
Witnesses told a trial at Oxford Crown Court that the boy was lucky to survive and had no memory of his fall.
Stocks, formerly of Goring-on-Thames, was unanimously found guilty of attempted murder, rape, sexual assault of a child under 13 and inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity.
He was sentenced to life in prison, with a minimum term of 19 and a half years.
Detective Sergeant Rachel Jackson, from Thames Valley Police’s Child Abuse Investigation Unit, said: “I am pleased that today Stocks has been given a very significant sentence for his horrific and diabolical offences against two young children.
“Stocks is an extremely dangerous individual, who thought of no one but himself, to protect himself from prosecution by removing the boy from the equation.
“He has never shown any remorse throughout this investigation.
“I would like to commend both victims for their incredible courage and determination in helping us bring Stocks to justice.
“They showed immense maturity and clarity, both in their interviews with the police and in court, about what had happened to them.
“It is thanks to this truly inspiring courage that Stocks has now been brought to justice and will remain in prison for a long time, where he deserves to be.
“In my years of investigating child abuse, this is one of the worst cases I have dealt with, and the impact it has had on the victims, as well as all the officers and staff who investigated this case, cannot be underestimated.”
