A PENSIONER who preyed on vulnerable youngsters and gave a 10-year-old boy pocket money to perform sex acts was jailed for four years.

Peter Bates, aged 68, of Beckenham Road, Beckenham, groomed the boy into going along with the abuse, heard Southwark Crown Court.

The former squaddie also molested a 16-year-old cleaner 20 years later after inviting him to his home to teach him about sex. When the 16-year-old turned him down, Bates took him to a deserted caf where the boy's horrified mother caught him abusing her son.

Sentencing him to four years, Judge James Wadsworth told Bates: "From reading the reports about you, it is clear you are much more concerned for yourself than those you have damaged."

Prosecutor Patricia May told the court the second victim was "nave and trusting" and was working as a cleaner on an estate where Bates was living.

The boy was moved to another estate but Bates did not give up.

One day, the supervisor and the boy's mother found the tearoom locked, looked through the keyhole and saw Bates with his back to the window.

Mrs May told the court: "His trousers were down and the boy was performing a sex act on him."

The victim later told police he had been invited to Bates' home where the pervert said he would teach him about sex and showed him several porn magazines.

Mrs May said Bates "used force of will to make him perform sex acts".

The court also heard, in the early 1980s, Bates abused his "trusted position" as a family friend to molest another youngster and even pounced on him in the shower during a family break to the Lake District.

Bates admitted five charges of indecency with a child and three charges of indecent assault at earlier court appearances in Nottingham and at the Old Bailey.

The pervert was jailed for four years and ordered to register as a sex offender indefinitely.