THE mother of Burnley fugitive Philip Howarth today appealed to him to come forward and clear himself with police hunting him.

As Interpol mounted a major search for the 39-year-old bachelor, acquitted of sexually abusing a young boy in Thailand, Mrs Howarth said: "I hope everything will be cleared up."

And she declared: "He has done nothing wrong and I am behind him 100 per cent."

Mrs Howarth who still lives in the Burnley borough, said she had not heard from her sacked public schoolteacher son since he jumped plane on a re-fuelling stop in Athens as police at Heathrow waited to interview him after allegedly finding child pornography during a raid on his Wolverhampton home.

Earlier, he had been escorted to Bangkok airport for the flight to Britain, but Greek police expected to meet the Olympic Airways flight on its stop-over in Athens, failed to do so and Howarth failed to re-board. Today Mrs Howarth said: "My son has not been in touch with me and I do not know where he is.

"I obviously want to hear from him."

Mrs Howarth said police had not yet contacted her.

She added that reports from Thailand about her son's activities had made things out to be "far more horrendous" than they were.

Philip, she said, had always maintained his innocence and she believed him.

"I am standing by him and I will stand by him until the day I die," she added.

West Midlands police said today they were still working with police in other countries to trace the missing Wolverhampton magistrate.

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