A BUS driver found guilty of assaulting a disabled boy on his way home from school has been acquitted on appeal.
In June, Allan Ketley, 63, was found guilty at Chelmsford Magistrates' Court of assaulting the autistic teenager by pushing him into a bush after the boy was disrupting other passengers.
As a result, magistrates imposed a 12-month community order on him, ordered him to carry out 40 hours unpaid work and to pay the boy concerned £50 compensation for his upset.
But at Chelmsford Crown Court last week, Mr Ketley, who has maintained his innocence throughout the legal battle had his conviction overturned.
Judge Rodger Hayward Smith QC who was sitting with two JPs said that they doubted the credibility of the boy's evidence.
He said: "We are far from sure that Mr Ketley did commit this offence. The conviction is quashed."
On March 2 this year, Mr Ketley was driving a bus with five children with special needs from their school in Braintree.
Mr Ketley said that the boy's behaviour had been getting increasingly worse and he had already spoken to his mother about it twice that week. That afternoon, the 14-year-old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, kept fiddling with the safety strap of a severely disabled girl's wheelchair and was misbehaving.
Mr Ketley pulled over in a layby near the Dolphin pub, Bradwell, and asked the autistic boy to get off the bus.
He said: "How would you like me to push you through that hedge?"
He admitted that with hindsight he probably shouldn't have said that but was adamant that he never touched the boy.
The boy claimed that Mr Ketley pulled him off the minibus by his arm and pushed him backwards into a prickly hedge, but the court was told that the boy had no scratches or injuries at all.
The court heard that Mr Ketley had glowing character references and the youngsters themselves called his vehicle The Happy Bus.
The grandfather-of-eight has already completed his sentence and paid the compensation, but it is expected he will now be reimbursed.
Immediately after he was cleared, Mr Ketley, of Collingwood Road, Colchester, said he would try and get his job back seeing as he has been out of work since this incident.
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His wife of 30 years Charmaine, who was an escort on the same bus, said: "We have had six months of hell."
The judge was initially going to allow the boy's identity to be revealed but changed his mind when Mr Ketley urged him not to, saying that the complainant could potentially suffer as a result.
"That says much in his favour," said the judge as he quashed the conviction.
Judge Hayward Smith added: "We were impressed by Mr Ketley's evidence and that of his wife. Also, there's no corroboration of the complainant's evidence.
"Although the hedge was a prickly hedge, the boy was examined and no injury was found. If he had fallen over as he said there would likely to have been some form of scratching."
After the court case, the mother of the boy said: "We are disgusted. That's all I can say. We are going to be writing to the courts. We just can't believe it.
"After what my son has been through it's just disgusting. He didn't alter what he said both times he spoke about it. It's just not right."
