Stanley Andrews, 71, pleaded guilty in the County Court at Ballarat in October to 12 charges, including rape and indecent assault.

The court was told Andrews committed the offences against three boys at his Scarsdale home between October 1979 and February 1987.

The youngest boy was just nine years old at the time.

Defence lawyer Neill Hutton had told the court Andrews had been successfully rehabilitated while serving a jail sentence in Western Australia for similar offences in the early 1990s and had lived in the same Perth community for the past 11 years without incident.

He said those factors, along with Andrews' chronic health complaints which included morbid obesity and diabetes, were cause for a mitigated sentence.

Judge Susan Cohen said Andrews had used his victims to make them feel degraded and humiliated.

''It was a manipulative act of power over the young and vulnerable,'' she said.

But Judge Cohen said Andrews' risk of reoffending was ''relatively low''.

Andrews was convicted and sentenced to 6 1/2 years' jail, with a non-parole period of three years.