FORMER Avening church organists and choirmaster Stuart Richard Walkley has been sentenced to eight months in prison suspended by 12 years.

 Mr Walkley, 64, of The Old School, Kingscourt in Stroud appeared in Winchester Crown Court on Wednesday, February 15 and pleaded guilty to one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

He had already been acquitted of four historic charges of sexual assault against teenage boys in the 1980’s whilst working as a superintendent at Southdown, a national children’s home in Old Alresford in Hampshire.