They were the 20 victims of James Michael Brown and most of them gathered at East Maitland District Court yesterday to watch the serial paedophile be led from the court to spend his first night in jail.

Brown, 61, sexually abused his victims when he was a volunteer with the Anglican Church at Kurri Kurri between 1974 and 1995.

He plied them with alcohol and cannabis and performed various sex acts on them until one of his victims went to the police in 1996, the court heard.

Brown was charged the next year, but the case collapsed when the victim could no longer tolerate being called a liar at a committal hearing.

Brown pleaded guilty yesterday to abusing that victim.

He also pleaded guilty

to 26 other offences including indecent assault, buggery and homosexual intercourse with a boy.

Most of the offences were committed in Kurri Kurri while others occurred during trips to Bathurst and Boat Harbour.

One of the victims was an orphan taken in by one of the church’s boys’ homes, the court heard.

Brown said he was sexually assaulted by a priest when he was about 20 and added that he was traumatised by the incident.

But he struggled to explain why only a couple of years later he began sexually abusing boys himself.

‘‘It was very selfish of me,’’ he said.

‘‘I’ve been traumatised by the whole deal ... I realise what I done to these people and that I’ve been praying for them as a Christian daily to hope that they might find peace.’’

Brown said he grew up in Kurri Kurri and kept a close association with the church as an adult where he was known as Brother Jim.

He admitted that most of his offences were committed before 1984 because it was about that time that he started to realise the impact his offending was having on his victims. But that didn’t stop him. He conceded that he kept abusing boys for at least another decade.

Some of the boys came from homes where alcohol was forbidden. Brown gave enough alcohol to at least one eight-year-old that the child almost passed out when Brown assaulted him.

Brown pressured a lot of his victims not to report his offending by threatening to tell their parents that they had drunk alcohol. He even told a pyschologist: ‘‘There wasn’t that big an age difference and they seemed willing,’’ the court heard.

The sentencing hearing before Judge John North continues today.