Former school nurse who lied about her qualifications jailed for grooming and sexually abusing vulnerable Scarborough boy

Sherley Bond, 66, was in her thirties when she started having unprotected sex with the Scarborough youngster while working as a nurse or care assistant at a school in North Yorkshire.

York Crown Court heard that Bond had sex with the underage teen boy on multiple occasions over a two-year period.

He did not report the crimes until 2020, some three decades after the abuse, because he was worried that he had let the school down and felt inexplicable guilt.

Bond was charged with seven counts of indecent assaulting a child under 16 years of age but denied all allegations.

However, a jury found her guilty of all but one count following a trial earlier this year, during which she claimed she only had a “vague recollection” of the victim, who cannot be named for legal reasons.

Trial prosecutor David Gordon said that Bond – who was more than twice the boy’s age – had lied about her nursing qualifications to land a job at the school.

The victim said he didn’t realise at the time that sexual activity with the adult staff member was illegal and did not say anything about it for years because he feared he would be blamed and did not want to let her down.

“[The victim] remembered Sherley Bond to be a care assistant, although he classed her as more of a matron,” said Mr Gordon.

Bond, a mother-of-three, became a school staff member and “senior house parent” by the time the victim reached his teens.

She had sex with him on “multiple occasions”, either on school premises, at her own home or in her car.

Mr Gordon said the victim had carried his own sense of guilt because he “regarded Mrs Bond as some kind of friend or even a mother figure”.

He said that when applying for the job at the school, Bond claimed to be a registered general nurse. She later claimed, falsely, that this was an administrational error by the school and “nothing to do with her”.

The victim said the first time he had sex with Bond was in the living room of her home. He said Bond had initiated sex and he was “scared and nervous” because it was his first such experience.

He said he and Bond also had sex at a motel in York on about five separate occasions and in the back seat of her Peugeot 205 in “quiet lanes”.

“It’s something I have lived with for years [and] it’s a big bag to carry,” he said.

He said it was years after leaving school that he realised Bond’s actions were criminal. In 2020, he contacted his old school to tell them about the sexual abuse and police were informed.

Bond – who had since moved to various parts of the country and now lived in Tameside, Greater Manchester – was brought in for questioning but denied all accusations.

She appeared for sentence on Monday September 12 after being convicted by the jury of six of the seven charges, some of them “multiple-incident” counts.

Prosecuting barrister Kate Batty said there was “significant” grooming of the victim and an “abuse of trust”.

In a statement read out in court, the victim said that Bond “must have known how vulnerable I was”.

The abuse had left him feeling like “I don’t really matter” and emotionally detached.

Defence barrister Patrick Palmer said that Bond, who is also a grandmother, was going through “severe” mental health problems at the time of the offences and was now in poor health.

Judge Simon Hickey told Bond, now of Higham Lane, Hyde, that she had “quite deliberately used your position of trust to abuse this boy”.

“[It happened] in a car, in a motel, on school premises, at your home – all places where this young victim should have felt safe and protected,” he added.

“It’s had a lifelong effect upon him. There was significant planning; there was grooming behaviour. He was a particularly vulnerable child.”

He said that Bond had "played up her illness" in efforts to get the case against her stopped or delayed.

Bond was jailed for 10 years, of which she will serve half behind bars before being released on prison licence.

She was also placed on the sex offenders’ register for 10 years and given a 10-year sexual-harm prevention order to place curbs on her contact with children.

Detective Constable Suzanne Hall, of North Yorkshire Police, said Bond had “abused her position, taking advantage of a child for her own gratification”.