A FORMER scoutmaster who turned a Milverton care home into "a paedophile's paradise" and subjected boys to torture has been jailed for six years.

William Rogers, aged 51, was the first person to be tried at Bristol Crown Court following a two-year investigation into child abuse across Avon and Somerset.

Some 22 police officers have interviewed more than 1,000 pupils of care homes in Operation React, an investigation of allegations stretching back more than 30 years.

Rogers, known as Big Bill, denied but was convicted of 16 counts of indecent assault, one of inciting boys to indecently assault other boys and one of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

He admitted 13 other offences, all of which took place when he worked at the Olands Observation and Assessment Centre in Milverton between 1980 and 1987. His most recent address was in Weymouth.

The jury heard that the assaults were part of "sadistic" games of torture with boys as young as nine. Photographs taken by Rogers were shown of naked boys doing press-ups and of one climbing a tree.

John Royce, prosecuting, said Rogers had a "grooming process" through which the boys were prepared for more serious sexual activity.

Under cross-examination, Rogers said all the dares were "reasonable".

But, jailing him, Judge Francis Gilbert QC told Rogers: "You abused that trust very gravely indeed - you saw them as playthings for your own sexual and physical pleasures.

"The truth is, you treated Olands as a paedophile's paradise where you submitted the children in your care to sexual abuse, to pain, to bondage and even to torture for your own perverted pleasure."

Rogers was acquitted of two offences of indecent assault and the judge directed the jury to return not guilty verdicts on four other similar charges. The jury failed to return a verdict on two further indecent assault claims, which the judge ordered to remain on file.

Rogers, who showed no emotion when convicted or when sentenced, is to remain on the sex offenders register indefinitely.