A VIOLENT criminal who committed 100 crimes as a teenager has been awarded £75,000 damages from Bolton education chiefs after he blamed them for his fall into a life of crime.

Marvin Pomfret -- dubbed a "one boy crimewave" as a teenager -- claimed the local authority sent him to the wrong school.

He said his career as a criminal could have been halted if Bolton Council had provided him with an education which stretched his mind.

Pomfret, now aged 23, is currently serving a life sentence in jail for holding a prison officer hostage and beating him with a baseball bat.

He won the £75,000 damages in an out-of-court cash settlement at the High Court in Manchester.

The court had heard that Pomfret -- said to have an IQ of 130 -- was a bright youngster with behavioural problems who became a delinquent and a criminal after he was sent to a school for children with learning difficulties.

His lawyers claimed the council had failed to act on experts' advice that Pomfret should be put in a special residential school as a gifted but disturbed child.

They said his escalation into crime could have been avoided if his problems had been addressed. Instead, he was sent to Stocks Park, a special day school in Horwich.

Pomfret's criminal career started at the age of seven when he attacked a teacher with a chair and was expelled from The Moss County Primary School in Breightmet.

Eventually he was put into a children's home -- but that failed to break his spiral of crime.

When he was a teenager, even his own mother said she had all but given up hope for her son. At the height of his crime spree in 1994, she called for him to be locked up in a secure unit.

The damages awarded to Pomfret have been roundly condemned.

Former Conservative Home Affairs spokesman Ann Widdecombe said: "It's madness, absolute madness."

And Bolton Council leader Bob Howarth called it "outrageous".

He added: "If he's so bright, then he should recognise that he is a criminal and we should stop making excuses for these people.

"If he can make out that he's a victim and can sue on that basis, then I think his victims should be able to sue him for the distress he has caused them. It's a staggering, ludicrous thing to be heard before a court."

Bolton North East MP David Crausby agreed. "The world has gone mad," he said. "Obviously we have got to make sure children are given the right education, but I have sympathy for the council in what's becoming a claims culture."

Bolton Council agreed the out-of-court settlement because to fight Pomfret's case would have cost thousands of pounds more.

Pomfret appeared in court in Manchester handcuffed to a warder and heard the settlement of his claim announced.

His solicitors were due to take advantage of a ruling by the Law Lords in 2000 that children with special needs could seek compensation from councils which failed to provide proper help.

Legal costs of the case will be paid for out of Pomfret's award, leaving around £30,000. It will be placed into a trust fund and handed to him when he is released on licence.

In 1998, a judge at Newcastle Crown Court ordered that Pomfret be detained for life after he held prison officer Malcolm Joyce hostage for 19 hours and beat him with a baseball bat. The officer at Castington Young Offenders Institution in Northumberland suffered mental trauma following his ordeal. Pomfret was given category A status and was moved to Full Sutton high security prison near York. In 1999 he failed in his attempt to reduce his security rating.

A spokesman for his solicitors, Teacher Stern Selby, said Pomfret, who was jailed for life under "two strikes" legislation, hoped to be released in the near future. He had received educational help in custody and, on release, he planned to do a degree in film studies.

He said: "Marvin is a very impressive and bright young man with obvious potential in the film world. He already has an Open University foundation degree in humanities and, on three occasions, he has been awarded the Kostler Prize for short story writing."

A spokesman for Bolton Council said: "We take seriously our responsibilities towards children with special educational needs and ensure they are assessed and provided with the most appropriate support.

"In this case, the pupil in question was given a place at a day special school for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties and it was considered that this would best meet his educational needs.

"He was assessed and it was felt by our experts and independent experts that a residential special school was not the course to follow. We stand by that decision. However, we have a responsibility to our council taxpayers and fighting this case would have resulted in huge legal costs."

One of Pomfret's former teachers at Stocks Park said last night: "He was a very clever boy and very good at manipulating people because often he was actually cleverer than them. If he wanted to do something, he would."

"Marvin and I are very pleased that this case is finally over. It goes some way to rectify the mess that the local education authority made and, although the compensation is welcome, it is unfortunately too late.

"The local education authority has accepted there is a significant possibility that Marvin might have turned out differently if he had been given the proper help when he needed it."

"Criminals are suing institutions successfully with too much regularity, when we should be spending the public's money on the public. It is the tax payers of Bolton who will be paying these damages.

POMFRET'S LIFE OF CRIME

Pomfret began his criminal career aged just SEVEN when he attacked a teacher with a chair and was expelled from school.

Aged 10, he was arrested for breaking windows.

When he was 11, he was in trouble for stealing bicycles and burglary.

By 1994, when he was 14, he had 90 convictions.

The same year he escaped from a secure unit in Kidlington, near Oxford, and was arrested for boarding a local train without a ticket. He also head-butted and spat at a police officer near Bolton Market Hall.

Later he was arrested 10 times for burglary, robbery, public offences and vehicle taking.

He also admitted stealing whisky from a shop. Social workers found him high on drink and drugs on a cycling trip.

Aged 15, Pomfret was sentenced for taking a car without consent, driving while disqualified, having no insurance and two offences of stealing from cars -- all committed while he was on a 12-month supervision order, imposed for going equipped for theft and handling a stolen watch.

When he was 16 in 1996, he was locked up in a Young Offenders' Institution for four years having been found guilty by a jury on charges of intentional wounding and affray. He slashed a teenager on both sides of his face, his neck, his shoulder and his arm.

On the same night he used the knife again, but his intended victim escaped unharmed. He was convicted at Bolton Crown Court for wounding with intent.

Two years later, in 1998, he was ordered to be detained for life at Newcastle Crown Court after pleading guilty to holding prison officer Malcolm Joyce hostage for 19 hours and beating him with a baseball bat.