Former police officer from Warwickshire sentenced for sexually abusing young girl
A DISGRACED former police sergeant has been sentenced for sexually abusing a young girl more than 40 years ago.
Timothy Lively, who became a successful businessman after being discharged from the Warwickshire force in 1986, denied 26 sexual offence charges against girls and boys between the mid-1970s and the summer of 1986.
Following a 15-week trial, which ended in May 2019, a jury at Warwick Crown Court convicted the 62-year-old of two charges of indecently assaulting a girl, aged between 10 and 12, in the late 1970s and one of gross indecency with the same girl. He was found not guilty of nine charges in relation to four boys, but the jury was unable to reach verdicts on the remaining 14 charges.
At the time prosecutor Rosina Cottage QC asked for time to consider whether there should be a retrial on those outstanding matters.
However, after a series of delays, caused largely by Lively making two attempts to take his own life, Miss Cottage said it had now been decided not to pursue another court case.
After reading the reports, Judge Anthony Potter ruled that Lively, of Old School Mead, Bidford, was unfit to stand trial on those charges.
Explaining the decision, the judge last week said: “Following his conviction Mr Lively made first an attempt to take an overdose, and then a couple of days later made a bid to end his life by driving his car at speed into a tree. That has left him confined to a wheelchair and has profoundly affected his short-term memory, and he is also assessed as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.”
Judge Potter sentenced Lively to 20 months in prison, suspended for 18 months, with an 8pm-7am curfew for three months, and ordered him to register as a sex offender for ten years.
During the trial Miss Cottage said Lively had committed the offences when he was a serving Warwickshire Police officer or, before that, a cadet, and also carried out voluntary work at a children’s home. It was at the home that Lively, who was about 17 at the time, sexually assaulted a girl.
She did not make a complaint herself, and only revealed what had happened when police contacted her during an investigating into other complaints against Lively.
Stephen Vullo QC, defending, said: “[Lively] is in a wheelchair, and will be for life, and has a brain injury which he will have for life. He has to a large extent suffered very significant punishment already.”
He pointed out that Lively had spent two months in custody following his second suicide attempt, during which time he was under 24-hour guard after being transferred to a spinal unit in Oswestry.
Sentencing Lively, Judge Potter told him: “You befriended [the girl] and gained her trust and then sought to exploit that. It began when you were 16 or 17 and in the police cadets. She did it because she was scared and saw you as a figure of authority.”
He added: “I am just persuaded, as an act of mercy, that I can suspend the sentence.”