A paedophile who spent decades on the run in Thailand after abusing children while serving as a scoutmaster has had nine years cut from his prison sentence following a legal challenge. He had evaded justice for a lengthy period before eventually being brought back to face the courts for offences committed against children in his care, cases that caused lasting harm to his victims and prompted scrutiny of how such abuse went undetected for so long.

The reduction in his sentence followed a review of the original term handed down, though the article does not fully detail the legal grounds cited for the cut or the exact length of his revised sentence. His case has renewed attention on historic child abuse within scouting and other youth organisations, and on the challenges of extraditing or tracking down offenders who flee abroad to avoid prosecution.