Latest Offenders Durham

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CHILD abuser Gary Haggas starts an 18-year prison term today - still denying the terrible crimes which wrecked his two daughters’ childhoods.

The 67-year-old former ice cream man shows no remorse for the litany of sexual abuse he inflicted on his two daughters decades ago.

He begins his long sentence as his victims bravely waive their right to anonymity and launch a campaign to encourage other abuse victims to speak out.

Judge Peter Armstrong told Haggas yesterday: “You’ve devastated their lives and robbed them effectively of a happy childhood.

“And you’ve now got to pay the price for that behaviour.”

Teesside Crown Court heard how he subjected the girls to systematic abuse for years in the 1970s and 1980s, sexually assaulting and raping them.

He molested them in the family homes in Hemlington and Middlesbrough, his car, one of the ice cream vans he operated in the town and their mum’s shop on Parliament Road.

Judge Armstrong said it was “a catalogue of the most appalling offences” against Janet Haggas and Jean Cookson.

The most serious crime was raping the two girls in each other’s presence - an offence which earned him an 18-year jail sentence on its own.

The judge read moving statements about the impact on the girls, now women in their forties, who had to relive their ordeals in the witness box.

He said: “These offences involved a gross abuse of a position of trust as a father. You should have been protecting these girls, not abusing them.

“They were carried out over a long period of time. They were particularly young and vulnerable when it all started.

“The offences were repeated over and over again.

“You continue to deny these offences and so you’ve shown absolutely no remorse whatsoever for what you’ve done.

“You offered sweets to the girls, told them they were your good girls, a form of bribery in my view, typical of paedophile-type behaviour.

“Your daughters have had to live with these offences and knowledge of them for very many, many years.”

Haggas’ had a previous conviction and nine-month prison sentence from 1996 for gross indecency with a boy.

The judge said this indicated “a distorted and perverted interest in sexual offending against children”.

He said it had to be a long sentence to punish him for the “dreadful” offences and show others that such behaviour “simply cannot be tolerated”.

Haggas, of Whingroves, Thornaby, denied all 25 charges against him and took the case to a long trial earlier this year.

The jury unanimously convicted Haggas of seven charges of rape, seven of indecent assault and one of indecency with a child, and cleared him of two rape charges.

He was accused of indecently assaulting another complainant but he was acquitted on all eight of these charges.

Jurors heard the shocking details of the sexual attacks, which started when each of the girls was about seven and carried on into their teens. The trial was told that Haggas was “a controlling and manipulative abuser”.

In both cases, the abuse started as Haggas touched the girls as they sat on his knee, then escalated to worse assaults and repeated rapes.

He abused Janet regularly for about 10 years, raping her on the day of the Queen’s Jubilee in 1977 when she was just 11.

He raped Jean while she was off sick from school and once kept her home to rape her while the rest of the family were in Albert Park.

He said to her she should “do as she was told”, ignoring her protests and saying no, and once gave her a £5 note to try to ensure her silence.

The allegations emerged decades later as a detective was told of the abuse and formal complaints were made.

Haggas denied the offences in police interviews and claimed the women were lying after getting their heads together.

Defence QC Jamie Hill asked the judge for mercy yesterday.

He told the court: “Mr Haggas has consistently denied these offences and of course continues so to do.”

He said the crimes stopped 28 years ago and Haggas’ risk of re-offending had diminished.

The judge did not reduce the sentence because of Haggas’ “infirmity”.

Standing with a walking stick in the dock, Haggas was said to have high blood pressure, hip problems, awaited surgery and took disability benefits.

The judge said reports indicated Haggas, who did voluntary vehicle and maintenance work for his church, posed a risk to children in the future.

He was given a sexual offences prevention order banning him from unsupervised contact with under-18s.

He will be banned from working with children and will be on the sex offenders’ register - all indefinitely.

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A MAN who raped and sexually abused three young girls was yesterday jailed for 15 years.

Mark Patrick Henderson, 49, gave the girls alcohol and used an element of coercion while carrying out the offences.

But Durham Crown Court heard that after the allegations came to light, in December 2009, Henderson continually refused to accept his guilt and only began to make admissions on the day of his scheduled trial, last month.

Julie Clemitson, prosecuting, said each of his victims had to brace themselves to come to court to give evidence, while one witness was even flown from the US for the trial.

But over the course of two days, Henderson finally came clean and admitted a total of 11 charges, including three of rape, indecency with a child and indecent assault.

He was remanded in custody pending preparation of reports by the Probation Service.

Henderson, of Bishopton Lane, Stockton, who was previously from north-west Durham, was brought back to court for sentence, yesterday.

Aspects of the victim impact statements were outlined to the hearing, reflecting the long-lasting effect his abuse has had on his victims.

Robert Mochrie, for Henderson, who is of previous good character, told the court: “He’s a man of few words and often struggles to get his message across.

“There’s very little a person in his position can do to say how sorry they are. Perhaps the most they can do is to admit the offences and he did that, albeit at the foot of the door.

“He made blanket denials to police in interview and he’s been at pains to find courage to admit to his wife what he did.

“As long as he could, perhaps rather foolishly, he deluded his partner into what he maintained was the truth.”

Imposing the sentence, Judge Christopher Prince said it would have been 17 years if Henderson had not made his eventual admissions.

Henderson will remain on the sex offenders’ register for life.

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A man police said was the "librarian" of a global internet child abuse ring has been jailed indefinitely.

Philip Anthony Thompson, of Stockton-on-Tees, will serve at least three years and nine months, but a Teesside judge warned it could be much longer.

Thompson, 27, admitted 27 charges, including causing children aged under 13 to engage in sexual activity.

The website he was involved with used "borderline-legal" images to bring together "like-minded" people.

Police have so far pinpointed 360 suspects.

Handing down sentence at Teesside Crown Court, Judge Michael Taylor said Thompson posed a "very significant risk" to the public and therefore he would be imposing an indeterminate prison sentence for public protection.

He told him: "You have shown that you are a very dangerous individual indeed. I consider that you pose a very significant risk to the public and you are a dangerous offender."

"He [Thompson] was... the librarian/warehouseman for a myriad of images that were distributed to like-minded individuals both in this country and elsewhere" Det Chief Supt Mark Braithwaite, Cleveland Police.

Thompson, who lives with his mother in Gooseport Road, has also been placed on the sex offenders' register for life and banned from the internet and any contact with children.About 241,000 child abuse images - which were still and moving images of varying degrees of extremity - were discovered in his possession.

Police said more than 130 suspects had been uncovered in the UK and more than 50 arrests have been made.

As a result, 15 children in the UK have been removed from situations where they were being abused or were accessible to an offender.

Police revealed the network was first infiltrated by Metropolitan Police officers, working undercover, in May 2007

It became the largest investigation of its kind in the UK, also involving Cleveland Police and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP).

Users of the forum would post borderline-legal images of children and pass comments on them.

Police said "indicative images" rather than explicit child sex abuse images were posted online in an attempt to keep the site "below the radar" and prevent it being shut down.

According to CEOP, which co-ordinates covert investigations into internet child sexual abuse, users would make contact this way then meet other like-minded individuals and exchange images in "different online environments".

Its chief executive Jim Gamble said: "This website - whilst appearing to operate on the margins of legality - was clearly a front for the sinister, sexual abuse of children and an image trading ground for paedophiles."

Det Chief Supt Mark Braithwaite, from Cleveland Police, said Thompson had been "a critical piece of this network".

"He was the librarian/warehouseman for a myriad of images that were distributed to like-minded individuals both in this country and elsewhere."

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Twisted Army Cadet Major Andrew Shaw was snared when his details were picked up by child porn investigators in the USA.

As reported in later editions of last night's Gazette, Shaw, 49, has been jailed for ten years for his role in a sick plot to offer a schoolgirl for sex on the Internet.

The perverted plan, hatched with a man he had never met, sparked a year-long investigation on both sides of the Atlantic.

Police swooped after details of Shaw's sick correspondence with Isle of Wight postman Alan Lawson were passed to the National Criminal Intelligence Service.

He is understood to have been traced via a computer he used in his role as an executive officer with the Cleveland Army Cadet Force.

Shaw was employed by the Reserved Forces and Cadets Association in an administrative role. The Army has stressed that no cadets were involved in this case.

Teesside Crown Court heard how Shaw sent Lawson pictures of himself naked with the girl, while in e-mails Lawson spoke of drugging and sexually assaulting the child.

The pair, who admitted possession and distribution of child pornography, were found guilty by a Teesside jury of conspiracy to rape.

Shaw was jailed in February for 14 years, but the term was later reduced to ten years.

For legal reasons the case could not be reported until yesterday.

Lawson's sentence was cut by the judge from ten years to eight.

Ministry of Defence Police spokesman Steve Partridge said: "This was a wide-ranging inquiry which began after information was passed to the MoD Police following an investigation by the authorities in the US.

"Dedicated officers spent almost a year piecing together the electronic trail of evidence which helped lead to the identification of the two offenders and resulted in their successful prosecution.

"We believe the sentences of ten and eight years handed down by the court adequately reflect the seriousness of their crimes."

A Durham Police spokesman added: "We supported the MoD Police's operation to arrest Shaw and we went with them to his home in Barnard Castle.

"It was an early morning raid after which he was taken to a police station in Durham where he was interviewed by the MoD Police and charged."