Febuary 2009

Paedophile gave his name to girls, nine

A PAEDOPHILE breached a court order by telling two girls his name as he worked on a gardening project run by a crime reduction charity.

Joseph Hogan is indefinitely banned from communicating with children under the age of 16 by a Sexual Offences Prevention Order.

He had previously breached the order by befriending the grandchildren of a neighbour and buying them presents.

He was jailed for three years in November 2006 for those breaches, and released in February last year.

Nottingham Crown Court heard he was working on a project last September run by the National Association for the Care and Resettlement of Offenders, under the supervision, in Basford.

Two other offenders were with him when young girls from a neighbouring house sat on a garden wall.

Jim Metcalf, prosecuting, said: “On seeing the children, the project worker told the defendant and two others to pick up their tools and to go to the van which was parked outside.

“The project worker went with the other two to the van and returned to find the defendant was talking to the children and was telling them his name. The matter was reported to the police. He (Hogan) said the children initiated the conversation and he was merely responding.”

Hogan, 55, of Astral Grove, Hucknall, pleaded guilty to breaching the order. The court heard his other previous convictions were for indecent assaults on children.

Judge Michael Stokes QC sentenced Hogan to 30 weeks in prison, suspended for 18 months, with supervision for 18 months. He must comply with the Sex Offender Prevention Order and will also be tagged.

Gregor Purcell, defending, said Hogan had reported the latest breach before a complaint was made to police.

He said: “He is supervised very closely and will continue to be.”

The judge said the fact Hogan was before the crown court for a single breach showed strict supervision was taking place.

January 2007

Pervert plied family with old toys

A “highly dangerous” paedophile who pulled hundreds of toys from skips and sent them to a family in a bid to groom the four children has been jailed.

Joseph Hogan, 53, was already on a sex offenders’ order when he began plying the youngsters with old teddy bears, dolls and toy cars.

He also gave prams, books and clothes to the children’s parents, who were completely unaware of his history.

He spent two years attempting to groom the two boys and two girls, aged between seven months and seven years.

Officers, who described Hogan as one of the highest risk sex offenders in south Notts, were visiting him two or three times a week at the time of the offences.

But his actions were only exposed in November last year when they received complaints about his behaviour from friends and neighbours.

Hogan admitted 12 breaches of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order, which prevented him from attempting to communicate with people under 16.

Sentencing him, Recorder Yvonne Coen, QC, said: “Your contact with these children started by chance but it developed alarmingly and very worryingly into the same pattern your previous contact with children had followed.

“The furthest it got was bouncing a little girl on your knee and stroking her hair.

“But I’m quite clear that this can be properly judged to be grooming these children in preparation for something you planned to do to them and had done to other children in the past. It may have been slow-burn grooming, but nonetheless grooming it was.

“I take a very serious view of this behaviour. It was willful and persistent breaching of your order.

“I commend the police for their timely intervention. If that intervention had not come, then goodness knows what may have happened to those children.” Hogan was jailed for five years in 1998 after being convicted of a number of indecent assaults on boys and girls under 16.

He was given the Sexual Offences Prevention Order in November 2004 after police became concerned about his relationship with children in another family.

Recorder Coen added: “The real concern I have is that you have very little insight into how your behaviour affects children and their families and how in denial you are about what you have done. That, to me, is very worrying indeed. You are judged to be a high risk of committing further offences and judged to be a considerable risk to children.

“I hope your time on licence will give the probation service enough time to help you to over come your paedophile tendencies which seemed to have dogged your adult life.” He was sentenced to two-and-a-half years imprisonment on each of the 12 charges to run concurrently.

Detective Sergeant Phil Hallam, of South Notts police public protection unit, said: “We obtained a community disclosure order which enabled us to tell the children’s parents and others living on their street about Hogan’s past.

“They were shocked and very, very upset. They had no idea that he was a habitual and highly dangerous paedophile.” Police said his offending against children dates back more than 30 years.

DS Hallam said that Hogan was a known “skip scavenger”, passing on toys, clothes and baby accessories from his unhygienic foraging to parents.

He added: “Hogan is a high-risk sex offender and we were visiting him two or three times a week, even more often than we were legally required to, which, for his category of offender is every three months. But there was nothing from those visits that led us to believe he was actively grooming.