'Fat Vicar' who conducted Frank Bruno's wedding is jailed for abusing boy at children's home after court rejects claim his size meant he couldn't have molested boys as they sat on his lap 

  • Father Tony McSweeney, 68, watched as a friend repeatedly fondled boy
  • The Catholic priest collected child porn and kept sex toys in a drawer
  • Obese, he claimed he could not have molested children because of his size
  • Priesthood knew of allegations but moved McSweeney to another parish 
  • Conducted the wedding of boxer Frank Bruno and his ex-wife Laura 

Father Tony McSweeney, 68, watched as care home manager John Stingemore, his paedophile friend, fondled a teenager in the shower of Grafton Close Children’s Home

The 'Fat Vicar' who conducted Frank Bruno's wedding has been jailed for three years for abusing a boy at a children's home. 

Father Anthony McSweeney was locked up after the court rejected his claim that his 20st size meant he could not have molested boys as they sat on his lap.

The 68-year-old, who officiated at the boxer's wedding to ex-wife Laura, watched as care home manager John Stingemore, his paedophile friend, fondled a teenager in the shower of Grafton Close Children’s Home in Hounslow, west London, between 1979 and 1981.

The Catholic clergyman, once part-time chaplain at Norwich City FC, also collected vile child porn over ‘decades’ and was caught with a drawer crammed with sex toys by his cleaner, Southwark Crown Court heard. 

McSweeney was leading the congregation at St George’s Church in north Norwich when the claims against him emerged in 2013.

He was originally charged with Stingemore, 72, but the care home manager died weeks before the trial was due to start.

McSweeney’s 15-year-old victim remembered a ‘massive’ trainee priest who was a ‘right bulk’ visiting Grafton Close.

Together with Stingemore, McSweeney forced the young teenager to expose himself to them and touched him under the pretence of making sure he was ‘clean’ four or five times.

‘This was joint enterprise by both men to use the victim for their own sexual gratification,’ said prosecutor Sarah Plaschkes QC.

‘On a number of occasions this defendant, together with the officer in charge of the home John Stingemore, would be present when the victim was in the bathroom.

‘Mr Stingemore would touch him by, in his words, lifting his balls and making him bend over.’

The men groomed the ‘vulnerable’ and ‘isolated’ boy by using the washing routine to ‘confuse the child’ and to hide their true motivation. 

Both pensioners were accused of targeting children while Stingemore, of Stonehouse Drive, St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, was in charge of the council-run home.

The disgraced clergyman was found guilty of one count of indecent assault.

Together with Stingemore (pictured), McSweeney forced the young teenager to expose himself to them and touched him under the pretence of making sure he was ‘clean’ four or five times

Together with Stingemore (pictured), McSweeney forced the young teenager to expose himself to them and touched him under the pretence of making sure he was ‘clean’ four or five times

The morbidly obese Catholic priest argued he could not have molested boys as they sat on his lap because he was too fat to fit a teen on him

The morbidly obese Catholic priest argued he could not have molested boys as they sat on his lap because he was too fat to fit a teen on him

He was further found guilty of three charges of making indecent photographs of children after sickening images of sexual abuse were discovered on his Dell laptop dating between 2012 and 2013.

He was cleared of three counts of indecent assault and one of taking an indecent photograph of a child relating to two boys who lived in the home he volunteered in.

 McSweeney sat open-mouthed as he was jailed for three years for his crimes.

Judge McCreath explained the clergyman ’was prosecuted and convicted on a joint enterprise basis and on clear evidence that the touching of the child was done with approval and encouragement and for his sexual gratification.’

McSweeny was also made the subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order which restricts his access to boys between 12 and 17 years old and monitors his internet use.  

In 1998 McSweeney nearly lost his career when his cleaner discovered his stash of sex toys, truncheons and pornographic videos - featuring boys between 14 and 16 years old - at St Peter’s Catholic Church in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex.

He was originally threatened that he would be “banished” from the priesthood, but after around six months was quietly moved to a new parish, St George’s, in Norwich. 

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