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A paedophile who pushed a boy off a 100ft cliff to prevent him from revealing that he was raping a young girl has been jailed.
Anthony Stocks, 54, launched a calculated plan to kill the 10-year-old boy by taking him to a set of cliffs at Ovingdean in September 2022, with his victim left with lifelong injuries.
The fall was initially thought to be accidental but an investigation found that Stocks had carried out his actions to cover up three years of horrific child abuse.
While living at an address in east Oxfordshire between 2019 and 2022, he had repeatedly been subjecting a young girl to rape and multiple sexual assaults.
After she confided in the young boy, who made concerted efforts to prevent Stocks’ offending, he hatched his plan to murder the youngster.
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 the cliff in Ovingdean. Stocks had also told his female victim that he was planning on pushing the boy, who sustained multiple severe injuries.
Emergency services airlifted the boy to St George’s Hospital in London, where he had several fractures and a laceration of his spleen and kidney.
A trial at Oxford Crown Court heard how the boy was lucky to survive and could not remember the fall.
Stocks, formerly of Goring-on-Thames, was unanimously convicted of attempted murder, rape, sexual assault of a child under 13 and causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity.
He was jailed for life, with a minimum term of 19-and-a-half years.
Detective Sergeant Rachel Jackson, of Thames Valley Police’s Child Abuse Investigation Unit, said: “I am pleased that today, Stocks has been handed a very significant sentence for his horrific and evil offences against two young children.
“Stocks is an extremely dangerous individual, who had no thought about anybody but himself, to protect himself from prosecution by removing the boy from the equation.
“He has never shown any remorse throughout the course of this investigation.
“I would like to praise both victims for their unbelievable courage and resolve that helped us to bring Stocks to justice.
“They showed immense maturity and clarity, both in their interviews with police and at court, about what had happened to them.
“It’s because of this truly inspirational courage that Stocks has now been brought to justice and will now be in prison for a long time, where he deserves to be.
“In my years investigating child abuse, this is one of the worst cases I have dealt with, and the impact that this has had on both victims, as well as all of the officers and staff who investigated this, is not to be underestimated.”
