NTI_PETER_HESKETH_02

KIDDERMINSTER, UK, FEBRUARY 13, 2013;
Rev Peter Hesketh. See NTI story NTIVICAR. A disgraced Kidderminster clergyman who fleeced a dementia victim of over £61,000 while he was in a nursing home has been jailed for three and half years. Rev Peter Hesketh was unanimously convicted by a jury of theft at the end of an eight-day trial. He befriended widower Peter Court, former landlord of The Woodman pub in Ribbesford, Bewdley, and was granted power of attorney by his family to look after his financial affairs. But he then committed a serious breach of trust by siphoning cash from the pensioner’s life savings until he died aged 75 in May, 2007. Sentencing 65-year-old Hesketh, of The Presbytery, Shrewsbury Road, Kidderminster, Judge Toby Hooper QC said although held in “high regard” by his victim, he carried out “a planned and careful series of many thefts” over 17 months.