A former prison officer has been given a formal absolute discharge after he was found to have sexually assaulted a young inmate more than 50 years ago.
Alexander Flavell was also found to have committed misconduct in a public office during his time at Medomsley Detention Centre.
The pensioner was cleared of a charge of buggery and two of the assaults while the jury were unable to come to an agreement on a third charge of assault.
The Crown Prosecution Service formally offered no evidence in the outstanding charge and the 89-year-old was found not guilty of the allegation.
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Judge Howard Crowson sentenced Flavell to an absolute discharge during a short hearing at Teesside Crown Court.
He said: “On those counts where he was found to have done the acts last time, on the basis that it would make no difference whether you decided to go ahead with count three or not.
“On the counts that he was found to have done the act I impose an absolute discharge that was inevitable as there was no other outcome appropriate.”
In January, it was decided that the pensioner was unfit to stand trial but a jury would still rule on the facts of the charges that he faced.
Flavell, who is suffering from dementia, was excused from attending the trial of facts last month while his alleged victims gave evidence to a jury.
The prison guard's trial was the last in a long-running series of prosecutions of former officers who served at the County Durham detention centre.
The prison guard's co-accused Ian Nicholson died on December 26, 2021.
Mr Nicholson faced a charge of misconduct in a public office, three counts of a serious sexual offence and four counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
Jurors had heard how Flavell and another prison officer had 'greased up' an inmate after forcing him to strip naked before they shoved him backwards and forwards through a serving hatch in the centre's kitchen area.
Neville Husband, a disgraced Christian minister, was jailed for eight years in 2003 after being convicted of a series of sickening sex attacks on teenage boys.
The attacks happened at the detention centre in Consett, County Durham, in the 70s and 80s where Husband spent 17 of his 27 years with the prison service.
In 2009, 12 former inmates who were attacked by Neville Husband are sharing £528,000 in compensation from the Ministry of Justice.
Husband died the following year.
And in 2019, Brian Greenwell, 71, was sentenced to two years and six months in prison and Alan Bramley, 70, was given a sentence of 18 months.
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Both men were found guilty of one count of misconduct in a public office, reflecting consistent violence they inflicted on boys at the detention centre, near Consett, in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the same year, three other prison officers who led a brutal regime at a "hell hole" jail where traumatised young inmates were treated "like animals" have been locked up for a total of 13 and a half years.
Christopher Onslow, 73, John McGee, 75, and Kevin Blakely, 67, were jailed for a total of 13 years and five months.
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