A RETIRED headteacher has been jailed for three years for sex offences involving young girls dating back 24 years.

Nigel Weekes played lurid games with seven girls, four of whom were attending his school, a judge at Maidstone Crown Court was told.

Isobel Ascherson, prosecuting, said Weekes would get his victims to touch his private parts by asking them to retrieve items from his pocket. The offences dated back to 1978 when he was head of St Mary’s Primary School, Ashford.

Weekes, of Laurel Avenue, St Mary’s Bay, Romney Marsh, and formerly of Quarry View, Singleton, Ashford, admitted seven charges of indecency with a child and one of indecent assault. He denied seven other similar charges, two involving an eighth girl, and they were left on file.

Judge Anthony Balston told Weeks: “There cannot be anything much worse than a schoolmaster who abuses children in his care. You did this to children not only young, but very young indeed.”

Weekes, now 62, was also banned from working with children and ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register, both for life.