A DISGRACED cricket club captain was jailed this week for making gay pornography involving a 16-year-old boy. Rufus Ffoulkes, 48, of Alexander Road, Lowestoft, was A and B team captain of Kirkley Cricket Club, which went on to become Kirkley and Lowestoft Railway Cricket Club.

A DISGRACED cricket club captain was jailed this week for making gay pornography involving a 16-year-old boy.

Rufus Ffoulkes, 48, of Alexander Road, Lowestoft, was A and B team captain of Kirkley Cricket Club, which went on to become Kirkley and Lowestoft Railway Cricket Club. But despite a long criminal record “covering the whole of his adult life” he was only asked to leave after police approached the club last year about the latest offences, which did not involve the club or its members.

Amanda Ayers, from the club, said that as Ffoulkes was not a coach he was not subject to criminal record checks.

She said: “He did a self-declaration form. All he declared was that he had a previous conviction to do with the Department for Trade and Industry for fraud. Because he wasn't a coach he didn't need to do CRB checks. Once we found out about what he had been involved in, we asked him to leave.”

In fact Ffoulkes, who was a committee member and was involved in the club from 2003 until April last year, had 58 previous convictions. The oldest, from 1981 when he was aged 21, were sexual offences involving a 13-year-old boy. There were also 45 offences of fraud and nine of theft.

Yesterday he was jailed for two years and 11 months for inciting a child into pornography. His sentence would have been a month longer had he not pleaded guilty on the first day of his trial last month. He was also sentenced to 12 months in prison, which he will serve at the same time, for obtaining services by deception. This was paying the men who appeared in his films with cheques that bounced, though Ffoulkes said he meant them to be honoured.

The prosecution said Ffoulkes approached young men on the Gaydar website and offered them payment to appear in his films.

One of them brought along a 16-year-old boy, who Ffoulkes asked to appear in a film. He refused, but after being asked repeatedly and offered £500, he agreed. Ffoulkes organised sexually explicit photographs in the countryside near Great Yarmouth.

He then directed a film in which the 16-year-old took part in obscene sex acts without a condom.

Nicola May, prosecuting, said: “[The 16-year-old] was concerned it was unprotected sexual activity and he wished he had refused.”

Miranda Bevan, in mitigation, said: “Distasteful though this sort of activity is, the reality is that the gay pornography industry is sizeable and apart from the age of this young man, is legal. Unprotected sex is standard in the gay porn industry.”

She added: “He genuinely believed that this individual was over 18 but accepts that his belief was unreasonable and he should have conducted further checks.”

Judge John Devaux said: “You received a suspended term of imprisonment in 1981, and you said that though the victim was a 13-year-old you believed him to be 18. You were negligent then and you have been negligent again.”

He placed Ffoulkes on the sex offenders' register for life, and banned him from recruiting models on the internet, working with children or being alone with an under-18-year-old without their parent being present.