75ZT Community

I was chairing the remand Court this morning.

I thought I was, by now, pretty much inured to the shock of what some people will do. Not so.

There were five men in front of us, all of them over the age of 60, jointly charged with conspiracy to commit the offence of sexual grooming of a child contrary to Section 15 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003. In addition each defendant was charged, either individually or jointly, with specific offences under the same Act. The alleged victims aged between six and eleven years. I failed to tot up precisely how many individual alleged victims but can be sure that there were more than a dozen and less than twenty.

All five of the defendants stood in the dock, at times impassive or at other times actively leering. They made the whole Court room feel somewhat grubby.

They all chose to give no indication as to guilt and, although the conspiracy charge is indictable only, the individual Section 15 charges are either way and the Court had to sit through a litany of the most cynical, depraved, warped examples of human degradation and fantasy that I can remember hearing for a long time. In fact, the prosecutor seemed on the verge of being physically ill at one point but we had to hear it all as a decision had to be made regarding venue for each charge. Four out of five of those in the dock appeared to be revelling in the repetition of the evidence we were hearing. In addition we heard that all five have previous convictions for similar offences. There was a mass of photographic evidence as well but we were spared those images other than a very small sample.

Unusually, there were no charges of sexual assault or rape which leads me to believe that this was a purely commercial setup.

We decided that all the specific alleged offences were sufficiently serious for us to refuse jurisdiction and send them to the Crown Court along with the conspiracy charge. For certain reasons, the cases will continue in a Crown Court outwith the Black Country.

I have grave misgivings about the effect this evidence will have on the Jury, bearing in mind that we only had a précis of the events that gave rise to the charges, if the defendants eventually plead not guilty and all charges go to trial, which I have every reason to believe will be the case. God alone knows what effect this will have on the alleged victims and their families.

Oh well, another sleepless night for me I suspect

Don't you wish you could un-hear things you've heard at times?

I don't know how you do it Paul. I have often thought about becoming a Magistrate but I don't think I could deal with such instances.

You have my greatest respect.

Gary M.

Borg Warner wrote:I have often thought about becoming a Magistrate

If you're really interested Gary, PM me

Dealt with this enough in the Police. Nothing surprises me anymore.
The worst thing is there will already be people replacing them, that's what we always found when I was at the Yard Paul.
Yes I can still see some of the victims in my head to this day.

It is the convictions for previous similar offences - clearly justice is not working. But of course hands are tied by the likes of so called Human Rights legislation plus the fact that their hamsters died when they were five.

Do not know if California still has the Law but they introduced a three strikes and you are out - which meant be found guilty three times and you would get life imprisonment without parole and the first person to be so sentenced third offence was for stealing a slice of pizza.

Well done for what you are doing Paul and let's hope they get very long sentences and that they are 'welcomed' when they get to prison.

Well... this case seems to have been fast tracked. One pleaded guilty and got four years... with a deportation order, which was a surprise.

The remaining four went to trial where they were all found guilty. Sentences ranged from six to eight and a half years with one of the four also receiving a deportation order.

The Judge's sentencing remarks were quite spectacular. It's been a long time since I've heard anything as forthright from a Judge in a serious case.

I had reason to assess a serial sex offender over a 12 month period in Broadmoor. He had been locked up and was being considered to be released on licence. He had tortured and raped his victims, time and time again,holding them in a dungeon to abuse for his own pleasure, until one managed to escape and alert the police. In the course of my assessment, I had set him targets to be achieved and psychological traps, to test his ego and sexual ideation. Ultimately, my final report recommended that he remained a risk and should never be released. Despite showing remorse, I felt it was an act to get out, as beneath this veil of 'good behaviour' was a fixed belief, that his world was normal and that society just did not understand. There you have it... A common theme often seen in these psychopaths, that they are right and that it is society who is wrong.




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