A NORTH Yorkshire scoutmaster is today a convicted sex abuser after a jury heard how he abused Scouts during a 12-year period.

Four former and current members of the youth movement described night encounters when David Scrivener, 54, fondled their private parts in their tents on the Yorkshire coast.

The first sex assault was in 1989 or 1990, the second in 1994 and the last two in September last year. All the boys were aged ten or 11 when they were abused.

Scrivener, of Church Lane, Fyling Thorpe, near Scarborough, claimed he had never sexually touched the boys and denied four charges of indecent assault. But the jury at York Crown Court convicted him after a three-day trial.

Judge Jim Spencer QC fined him £2,000, saying that was the appropriate punishment because of the disgrace his convictions had brought him and the way people would view him.

He also put Scrivener on the sex offenders' register for five years.

Scrivener has been a Scout leader for more than 22 years.

The court heard that the first two victims kept quiet about their abuse until the last two spoke out last autumn.

Updated: 10:52 Thursday, May 01, 2003