Children's charity chief pleads guilty to sex attacks on prostitutes

Mar 22 2010 By Chloe Griffiths

Matthew Byrne 300

A CHILDREN’S charity chief has admitted four sadistic sexual attacks on prostitutes.

Matthew Byrne, 38, was due to stand trial accused of a total of 24 charges yesterday.

But at the last minute Byrne changed his plea and admitted vicious sex attacks on four different women.

It is understood the charity boss forced his victims to dress up in schoolgirl costumes before launching his attacks.

Liverpool Crown Court heard the assaults then involved Byrne tying up his victims, gagging them and strangling them.

During the attacks he repeatedly used a cane to beat the women for his own sexual pleasure.

In one attack he used a sexual implement to torture his helpless victim, while during another he suffocated a woman with a plastic bag until she believed she was going to die.

Byrne, who ran the Young Person’s Advisory Service, used to work with children as young as 10 and was once named among 86 leading lights of Liverpool.

But when his Wirral home was searched, police discovered he had turned a bedroom into a sexual torture chamber complete with shackles attached to the bed posts, a leather collar, a cane, rope and girls clothing. There was also a collection of violent pornography, while he had used his computer to access sadistic websites.