Why are the courts in the North-East being so lenient with paedophile perverts?
A number of recent cases at Newcastle Crown Court and Durham Crown Court stand out as being less than harsh in sentencing child molesters and paedophiles.
It is a little-known fact that social policy makers in the European Union are keen to influence the courts of justice, policing and social attitudes away from criminalising child sex-offenders. The new ‘Woke’ thinking is to slowly shift public attitudes into being more “accepting”, to shift language away from describing these individual as ‘paedophiles’ or ‘child molesters’, but instead to describe them as ‘minor attracted persons’ (MAP’s) In fact Police Scotland have already become involved in shaping a ‘discussion paper’ on this area of policing.
A quick look at recent cases in Tyneside, Teeside and County Durham reveal a worrying tendency towards this shift in prosecutions and sentencing.
Some of the paedophiles passing though the Crown Courts at Durham or Newcastle in recent months did not even face custodial sentences. Convicted perverts walked from court with suspended sentences, limited control other than probation supervision and a requirement to sign the sex offender’s register and be subject to so-called “sexual harm prevention orders.”
Consider the following cases:
Mark Collinson from Houghton-le-Spring, County Durham, convicted at Newcastle Crown Court.
In March 2021 Police raided his home to discover a massive digital collection of child sexual abuse images and videos collected by Collinson when he was in his mid-to-late teens, from 15 to 17 years of age.
Now in his early twenties, Collinson had collected, viewed and distributed on-line a total of 120,000 and 4,000 videos of child pornography. Some of the sickest material in Collinson’s possession was of babies being tortured and others of young children being tied up and blindfolded while being sexually abused by adults.
In court Mark Collinson was found guilty of three counts of making indecent images of children. His defence lawyers argued for mitigating circumstances, claiming that “He is an isolated person and he struggles with anxiety and friendships”. No mention there of the horrendous suffering experienced by babies and youngsters featured in Mark Collinson’s 120,000 images and 4,000 videos.
Unbelievably, Mark Collinson was sentenced to just 9 months suspended for two years with a rehabilitation order, in addition he was put on the sex offender’s register and had a sexual harm prevention order to run for 10 years.
Richard Land age 62 from Newbiggin by the Sea, convicted at Newcastle Crown Court on February 7th 2023. He was found guilty of the possession of over 10,000 sexual images of young boys, downloaded from the Dark Web.
In court Land claimed that his collection of child pornography was “the last forbidden thing”, which he had downloaded and saved “out of morbid curiosity”. The Police stated in court that Land’s images included those involving sexual activity between children and animals as well as the rape of young boys, the youngest victim being a 9-year-old boy.
Although an obviously psychologically twisted individual, the Probation Service assessment stated that Land was “a low-level risk of contact offences.” Meaning that he only wants to watch the sexual abuse of children, and not actually take part (They hope!). This paedophile is waiting to be sentenced.
David Carr, age 44 from Murton, County Durham, convicted at Durham Crown Court. Found in possession of the worst levels of child pornography including an hour-long video. Described by the North East Chronicle as the “Murton Paedo”. he was sentenced to just 2 years in prison.
Thomas Lock age 32 from Bishop Auckland, County Durham convicted at Durham Crown Court. He was found guilty of “committing a sexual act in front of a child”. In this case Lock had told the child that he was playing a “Naughty game” as he performed a sex act with a child’s cuddly toy.
This pervert was actually jailed for only 30 months and required to sign the sex offender’s register, but raised sufficient concern in court to be ordered to be subject to an indefinite sexual harm prevention order.
Sean Yearnshire, 24 from Leamington, Newcastle. Found guilty at Newcastle Crown Court of grooming a 13-year-old girl on Snapchat in June 2022. Yearnshire intended to prepare the way for him to meet the girl for sex, fortunately he was arrested before he could put his plans into action. But the court was surprisingly lenient, he was jailed for 35 months, put on the sex offender’s register and also put on a sexual harm prevention order for ten years.
Keith Sawkhill, a 65-year-old pensioner from Sunderland. At Newcastle Crown Court he was found guilty of sending internet sex messages to an underage teenage girl. Sawkhill was found guilty of “sexual communication with a child.” His sentence was a 12-month suspended sentence for 2 years with rehabilitation, put on the sex offender’s register and subject to a prevention of sexual harm order for ten years.
Perhaps one unexpected court appearance was the case of paedophile Craig Gilbert, which illustrates how repeat sex offenders cannot be trusted. Craig Gilbert, age 32 of no fixed address. In July 2022, Craig Gilbert was released from prison on licence to live in a hostel in Elswick, Newcastle.
Then just two weeks later Craig Gilbert was arrested and returned to prison after being caught downloading child pornography while in the hostel, this disgusting material included images of a girl under the age of five being raped.
Newcastle Crown Court sentenced Gilbert to return to prison for two more years and extended his original sentence by three years to be served on licence.
Possibly one of the most lenient sentences from recent trials at Newcastle Crown Court is the case of predatory paedophile Brett Lambert. Lambert from Lowestoft, Suffolk, was working in Aberdeen but during his travels was trawling the internet looking for contacts on homosexual dating sites and in particular was searching for teenagers.
Lambert was wary in case he fell foul of a trap being set by ‘nonce-hunters’ or a police operation, but could not resist what he thought was contact with a 14-year-old school boy. Lambert arranged to meet his new contact at the Easy Hotel in Newcastle city centre in May 2022.
Lambert walked into the hotel and was immediately identified and arrested in what was a police sting operation aimed at paedophiles. Newcastle Crown court heard that although Lambert was wary of being caught in a trap, he was in fact “a risk-taking sexual thrill seeker”.
He was sentenced to just 15 months suspended for 2 years with 100 hours of unpaid community work plus rehabilitation, was put on the sex offender’s register with a sexual harm prevention order for 10 years.
Interestingly the judge sentencing Brett Lambert told him, “Members of the public are vocal about offences of this type …… They would like people to be sent to prison for long periods of time, but the difficulty for the courts is I have to follow the guidelines and it’s not possible to send you to prison for the length of time members of the public sometimes think appropriate.”
So what exactly are these sentencing ‘guidelines’ and if sentences for those guilty of sex offences are not what the public think appropriate, whose ideas of justice are they serving?
British Movement considers that those individuals who commit sexual offences against children are the lowest form of life, a constant threat to our communities and incapable of being rehabilitated.
The harshest of prison sentences, with the strictest levels of control and punishment are what is required, except for child sex-killers who must face execution, the death penalty is the most certain method of removing such dangerous human garbage from British society.
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Main Image: Photo by Caleb Woods on Unsplash.
Bottom Image: Sex offender database.
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