 A FORMER North Wales vicar has been jailed for four years for sex offences against children. Richard Nigel Parry indecently assaulted two girls - aged between nine and 11 years old - while he served as a parish priest in the early 1990s. Jailing him for four years, Judge Merfyn Hughes QC said: "You were entitled to receive, and no doubt did, the respect of the community that you were supposed to serve. However, the reality is that you were behaving in a quite dis-graceful and depraved way." Parry's sordid past caught up with him after his marriage ended because of affairs with other women. Parry, 47, of Central Drive, Shotton, who served as vicar of Southsea, near Wrexham, and at Holywell, Flintshire, left the church in 2000 and started work as a counsellor. One of his victims challenged him about whether he would be working with children. He denied he would. Matthew Dunford, prosecuting at Mold Crown Court, said when she found out his work could involve children and young people she reported the matter to police as a precaution in case others suffered the same ordeal. She later told police: "I just want him stopped from doing this again and destroying anyone else's life." One charge of rape, which he denied, was dropped when the prosecution offered no evidence and a not guilty verdict was entered. But he admitted one charge of gross indecency with a child and five charges of indecent assault, all in the early 1990s. | 
