A SEX attacker who evaded capture for more than a decade?has failed in an appeal against his sentence for indecently assaulting seven young girls.
Anthony?De Boise, 63, a former officer for Wandworth Council, was jailed for 13 years at Southwark Crown Court in 2006?after admitting he had carried out the?attacks?in Surrey and south London.
On?Tuesday this week (November 23), De Boise, of Hurtbank Cottages, Holmbury St Mary, near Dorking, took his case to the Court of Appeal in a bid to have his punishment reduced, but it was thrown out by three senior judges.
The married planning officer attacked seven girls aged between 13 and 16 at Coulsdon, Riddlesdown and Esher between 1989 and 1996.
In one incident, two 13-year-old girls were left so traumatised by the abuse at Telegraph Hill, Hinchley Wood, that they scrambled through a barbed wire fence to escape.
Another was so sickened by?De Boise's?actions that she recalled wanting to vomit, while he wished another a "happy birthday" after attacking her shortly before she turned 15.
Despite a police manhunt, he remained at large for?10 years?after his final attack, but was caught out when he was arrested for an unrelated matter and a forensic linked was made.
De Boise?claimed his actions?were down to diabetic attacks, saying in police interviews that?he had felt depressed and unwell at the time and had not wanted to hurt the girls, although he?did say?he remembered what he had done.
At the Appeal Court, his legal team argued that fresh evidence from an expert in diabetes and the high blood sugar condition, hyperglycaemia, should result in his prison sentence being reduced.
The expert said there were elements to the case which suggested?De Boise had been suffering from "hyperglycaemic events" and so was not responsible, or not wholly responsible, for his actions.
The sex attacks had also stopped around the time that his condition improved, it was said.
But Mr Justice Mackay, sitting with Lord Justice Hughes and Mr Justice Cranston, said the expert had also noted features which made it less likely that?De Boise's?blood sugar might have been to blame.
Unlike most others who experience such attacks, he remembered a lot of his actions and there was no other evidence to suggest he had been hyperglycaemic at the times of the assaults, the top judge said.
He added: "We consider it must have been the case that the appellant was aware both of what he was doing and what he had done, even to an imperfect extent in its details.
"Had one of these offences happened as a single offence, followed by an immediate detection and prosecution, we could see a good argument for the proposition that his condition should be treated as significantly mitigating.
"For it to continue over a seven-year period is a very different picture.
"We feel driven to find that he knew what he had done and, it must therefore follow, of the risk that he might do it again if he took no steps to prevent it and sought no advice and help.
"He failed to take any action to prevent recurrence of these happenings. He kept his sexual feelings bottled up and hoped to defeat them on his own."
The judges upheld the 13-year sentence.
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