Deputy Care Home Manager Found Guilty of Grooming Vulnerable Teenage Boy in Her Care

Deputy care home manager Lindy Leah, 44, convicted of grooming a vulnerable teenage boy in her care with holidays, sexualised comments & explicit messages. Lindy Leah, a 44-year-old deputy manager at a St Helens children’s home, has been found guilty at Liverpool Crown Court of grooming a teenage boy in her care.

Leah, of Capesthorne Road, Warrington, was convicted of causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity while in a position of trust after jurors heard she became fixated on a teenage resident.

The court heard how Leah took the teenager on multiple holidays alone and blocked his transfer to an alternative placement which she admitted was in the boy’s best interests.

Leah denied any intention of a sexual relationship, telling the court she regarded the boy as a son and her conduct as misguided attempts to “help” him.

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Colleagues described her as a “bully” who was uninterested in doing her job and prevented others from caring for the boy

Jurors were shown WhatsApp messages in which Leah told the boy she loved him, asked “for a love bite” in exchange for returning his phone, and proposed they go “missing from care” for a “night away” together with something “red and silky” - which she denied referring to underwear, but instead claimed referring to wine, - as well as “balloons” — slang for nitrous oxide — and “flake”, a term used for cocaine.

She admitted sending the messages but claimed she had been drinking and taking pain medication, and that references to drugs and alcohol were “a joke”.

Jurors also saw a photograph recovered from her phone of the boy holding a balloon in his mouth; Leah told the court that this was because the boy was self-conscious about his teeth.

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One former colleague described her as “unnaturally friendly, unnaturally excitable” around the boy, recounting incidents in which Leah told him she had “no knickers” and, clad in a skin-tight bodysuit, invited him to look at her breasts On another occasion she reportedly removed her jumper after it received marks from paint, drawing the boys attention before wobbling her belly and chest in his direction.