Imposing the three year sentence on Kevin Etherton Blake but suspending it for three years, Judge Donna McColgan KC highlighted that in addition to the fact the 69-year-old has already served a three year sentence, doctors have told him there is no cure for his prostate cancer.
The judge told Craigavon Crown Court it was those two features which made the case exceptional and warranted the sentence being suspended.
At an earlier hearing Blake, from the Mullaghabrack Road in Hamiltonsbawn, Co Armagh, was convicted of a raft of sex offences committed against a single victim between 1 January 1998 and 31 December 1999.
However, following a Court of Appeal ruling, the convictions were quashed and a new trial was ordered.
Judge McColgan told the court, it was shortly before that new trial was scheduled to start that Blake entered guilty pleas to four charges of indecent assault and three of gross indecency with or towards a child.
Rehearsing the facts of the case during her sentencing remarks, the judge described how the victim was abused by Blake in his car, at a local snooker club and in the defendant’s home.
The court heard how the victim was around 11-years-old when he was subjected to repeated bouts of abuse, inappropriate touching and what would now be charged as oral rape.
Judge McColgan told the court how Blake would get the boy to sit on his lap and drive his car but when he did so, the defendant would touch him inappropriately.
The defendant would also take him to a local snooker hall in Portadown and after taking him into a private room, Blake would touch him his private parts over his clothing.
The boy would also call at Blake’s home and Judge McColgan said “there came a time when the victim’s mother permitted him to stay” overnight.
During that overnight stay, Blake touched the boy “skin on skin,” performed a sex act on the child and called the boy into his bedroom when the defendant was touching himself.
The abuse came to an end after the victim disclosed what Blake had been doing and when he was question by police in 2017, the defendant denied any wrongdoing.
He maintained that stance throughout the first trial and was ultimately convicted by a jury but having taken his case to the Court of Appeal, those convictions were quashed and a retrial ordered.
Judge McColgan said that in the intervening period, Blake had served the equivalent of a three-year jail sentence.
It was that sentence, the fact that Blake had not committed any other offences in the last 25 years and the fact that he is faced with “palliative chemotherapy,” which informed her decision to suspend the prison sentence.
In addition, Blake will be subject to a Sexual Offences Prevention Order, barred from working with children and he will remain on the police sex offenders register for the rest of his life.
Craigavon Courthouse
News in 90 Seconds – September 4th 2025