A FORMER RAF man whose sexual abuse of a schoolboy caught up with him 20 years on has had two convictions quashed on appeal.

But Colin Ernest Hobby will still serve the eight years in prison he was initially sentenced to.

Hobby was given the eight-year jail term at Teesside Crown Court in March, after admitting the systematic abuse of a schoolboy after gaining his trust.

Hobby, 73, challenged the length of his sentence. And although appeal judges overturned two of Hobby’s convictions, they said the eight years was “in no way manifestly excessive” for his crimes.

Hobby, of Hundens Lane, Darlington, admitted four charges of male rape, one of indecent assault, four of indecency and one of gross indecency.

Mr Justice Holroyde, sitting with Lord Justice May and Mr Justice Spencer at the Court of Appeal yesterday, quashed the conviction of gross indecency and another of indecency with a child.

He said the convictions were unsafe because the law which underpinned the charges covered a different age range.

The appeal judge said that the jail term took account of Hobby’s “appalling course of conduct”

and the “dreadful long-term consequences”

for his victim.

Mr Justice Holroyde concluded some of the sexual attacks were “tantamount to rape on a boy who was groomed for that purpose”.

At a court hearing earlier this year, it was reported that Hobby spent 15 years in the RAF, before taking a variety of civilian jobs.

He befriended the boy in the Eighties and won his trust while he carried out odd jobs in his street.

After an initial period of grooming, Hobby repeatedly molested him. A keen photographer, Hobby first took head-and-shoulder pictures then later obscene ones of his victim, and bought him gifts and sweets.

Hobby lived in Catterick, North Yorkshire, at the time, but moved to Darlington to put distance between him and his victim.

The court heard that Hobby’s actions ruined the life of his victim, who is now in his 30s.

After the abuse, he started to sniff glue, steal, and after leaving home at 15, became a drug-taker.

The victim went on to become a child sex offender and, in a statement read out during the initial court hearing, he said: “No punishment from my family or the police was as bad as what he did to me.”