AN elderly Catholic priest who sexually abused girls and boys in the 1960s and drove one youngster to attempted suicide was warned yesterday that he will almost certainly go to jail.

Patrick Fitzpatrick, 75, who used to teach at St Cuthbert's Roman Catholic School for Boys, in Hartlepool, admitted indecently assaulting seven youngsters.

Durham Crown Court heard he indecently assaulted two teenage boys, and yesterday he admitted a further three offences against three girls as young as eight and asked for two indecent assaults on two other boys to be considered.

Fitzpatrick, who walks with a stick and now lives at the Holy Cross Home in Ettrick Grove, Sunderland, denied two charges of gross indecency and an indecent assault involving one girl, which will remain on file.

Sentence was adjourned so that reports on Fitzpatrick can be updated following his latest pleas.

He was granted unconditional bail but Judge Richard Lowden warned him: "A custodial sentence is in my view almost entirely inevitable."

The charges against Fitzpatrick date back to the early 1960s.

Last October, he appeared before magistrates in Hartlepool charged with four indecent assaults against two boys aged 13 and 14, in the presbytery at St Cuthbert's.

The magistrates, who committed the case to the Crown Court for sentence, heard how he touched the boys intimately under their clothes.

One boy never returned to the church after being assaulted and the other blamed the experience for his attempted suicide at the age of 19 and descent into crime.

The court heard that the boys were told to "keep quiet" and that the offences were a serious breach of trust.

Fitzpatrick, who has no previous convictions, was arrested by Cleveland Police's child protection unit last September.

The charges involving abuse of three girls that he admitted at the Crown Court yesterday date back as far as June 1964.

The victims were an eight-year-old, an 11-year-old and a girl under 11.

The charges relate to offences committed between the summers of 1964 and 1966.

The court heard yesterday that the offences against the boys were committed in 1962 and 1963.

The offences to be taken into consideration were committed "some time in the 1960s" against a boy aged 12 or 13 and another aged 13 or 14.

No evidence was given to the court about the offences against the girls.

Sentence was adjourned to a date to be set in three or four weeks at Teesside Crown Court in Middlesbrough.