AN award-winning foster carer is facing jail for a string of serious child sex crimes carried out before he was to revel in the national spotlight.

Bill Rathbone appeared on television show Tricia with his wife, Brenda, in the early 2000s after they received recognition for their services to children.

Teesside Crown Court heard during a retrial how Rathbone's wife, who has since died, knew about him sexually abusing a girl but did nothing about it.

The 64-year-old former bar manager, from Middlesbrough, admitted having sex with his accuser - but claimed it was consensual when she had reached late teens.

A jury rejected his fabricated account and found him guilty of all the 14 charges he faced, and he will return to court next month to be sentenced.

Rathbone first faced a court in August last year, but the jury could not decide - but a second alleged victim came forward after hearing about it.

The court heard how Rathbone prevented one of his victims from going to the police by repeatedly threatening to kill himself if she exposed him as a paedophile.

She also thought that because her abuser was held in such esteem by officials at Redcar and Cleveland Council, she would not be believed if she told.

Eventually, last year, she plucked up the courage to report what had happened and Rathbone was arrested, prosecutor Paul Cleasby told the jury.

Years earlier, she had visited her doctor and told him what had happened as she sought help for depression which had been brought on by being molested.

When the GP contacted social services, Rathbone said it had been a non-sexual affair when she was 18 and that he had regretted it ever since.

Rathbone - along with his wife described as "mum and dad to more than 70" in a press report in 2002 - now works for a hardware store in Eston.

The jury heard how he sent one of his victims a series of text messages to apologise for "being a bastard" and the psychological damage he had caused.

Rathbone, of Norham Walk, Ormesby, was found guilty on a majority of 10-2 of 13 charges of indecent assault and one of gross indecency with a child.