A one-eyed paedophile has become the country's oldest convicted sex attacker - at 87.

War veteran Terry Bown shuffled into court with a stick, wearing a toupé and an eye patch, as two of his victims looked on.

The court was told how Bown abused three young boys over three decades, and even tried to blackmail one of their fathers to keep him quiet.

There were gasps as the elderly pervert was spared jail because of his age, despite pleas from his victims for him to be locked up.

As the octogenarian hobbled out of court one victim blasted: "I'm absolutely gutted. It doesn't matter how old he is, he should be locked up in prison for what he has done."

Bown, of Waterloo Street, Hove, pleaded guilty at Lewes Crown Court yesterday to four counts of sexual assault and one of witness intimidation.

The charges, which go back as far as the late Seventies, relate to two brothers and a third boy.

Bown, a retired painter and decorator who served in Burma during the Second World War and was awarded the Burma Star medal, admitted abusing the two brothers when they were aged eight and nine.

On both occasions he sexually assaulted the boys as they lay in their beds while he was babysitting for them.

Several years later he abused one of the brothers again on a number of occasions by groping him.

The fourth charge relates to an incident in 2000, when Bown gave the third boy, then aged 12, a £5 note and several coins along with a sexually explicit note before indecently assaulting him.

When Bown was charged with the offences against the third boy, he tried to blackmail the boy's father into dropping the allegations by sending him a letter along with photographs of the father naked with another man.

Bown, who was given a custodial sentence in the early Sixties for dishonesty after trying to use falsified documents to withdraw money from a post office, was described as an "old curmudgeon" by his defence barrister Richard Barton.

Mr Barton used the term to account for the way Bown, who is blind in one eye, had acted in interviews with the probation service, which had found him difficult and recommended he was sent to prison.

Sentencing Bown, Judge Richard Haywood said the offences were serious and would warrant an immediate custodial sentence in any other case but that Bown's was mitigated by his age. He was given a two-year sentence suspended for two years for the assaults on the brothers, a 12- month sentence suspended for two years for the assault on the third boy and a 12-month sentence suspended for two years for intimidating a witness.

All will run concurrently and Bown will be on the sex offenders' register for ten years.

Outside court, one of the brothers said: "I feel we have not got justice. No one has got justice.

"I was absolutely gutted because he got away with it and was able to walk free because of his age.

"That's not right. There's a man out there who's walking around that is a paedophile.

"It doesn't matter how old he is, he should be locked up."