The family of a convicted paedophile had to identify his body 15 days after he died due to a prison and police force failing to inform the coroner's office of his death. Former teacher Ronald Wotton was serving a 16-month prison sentence when he died of colon cancer.
The 80-year-old had previously been jailed for five years in 2014 for a string of vile sex offences, Teesside Live reports. Primary school pupils would make themselves sick with washing up liquid to try to avoid Wotton's lessons as the teacher sexually abused them in front of the whole class, a court heard at the time.
Whe the terminally-ill prisoner died in May 2021, the coroner was not informed until a week later - leading to his nephew having to identify his body 15 days after he had died. A fatal incident report, published in July 2022, found that neither the prison nor the police informed the coroner's office of Wotton's death.
