A treatment centre housing men deemed unsafe to mix with the public overlooks a football pitch used by kids as young as eight

A Daily Star Sunday investigation has revealed perverts spend hours staring at youngsters using the field which is built in the hospital’s grounds.

Parents allow their children to use the facilities unaware the leering monsters are just yards away.

The sports pitch is on the grounds of the Bethlem Royal Hospital in Beckenham, south-east London, in full view of the wing housing serial sex offenders, including many who have just come out of prison but are deemed to be too dangerous to be allowed back into public life.

A source at the hospital said: “They stand at the window and just watch the children play, just staring.

“It is disgusting. There are two paedophiles in particular who do it all of the time, whenever they can.

“The wing completely overlooks the pitch. It is terrible planning and they use that to their advantage.”

The wing – named Witley House One – overlooks the field used for a children’s football league, with youngsters playing up to three times a week.

Our source continued: “The kids train a couple of times in the weekdays then they play matches at the weekend, normally a Sunday. 

“It means there are always children and families around. Parents don’t have a clue though, and you can just imagine how mad they are going to go when they find out. It has been kept really hush-hush.”

Prolific child rapist Roy King, 50, is believed to be housed in the wing, which claims to treat “behavioural disorders”.

The pervert was jailed for five-and-a-half years in March 2007 after he was convicted by a jury for raping a homeless 18-year-old youth at knifepoint after offering him a bed for the night at his home in West Norwood, Croydon, south London. King has 11 convictions for as many as 25 separate offences, many of these horrific sex attacks on children as young as six. 

The Witley House One ward houses men aged 18 and over for a variety of mental health illnesses.

Not all are convicts or sex offenders. 

Online it boasts of treating patients with “severe and enduring” mental health problems, those detained under the Mental Health Act and adults who have been referred from the criminal justice system.

A spokeswoman for South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the hospital, said: “If any staff member has a genuine concern they should go through the appropriate channels.”

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Bethlem Royal Hospital

The Bethlem Royal Hospital is a hospital for the treatment of mental illness located in London, United Kingdom and part of the South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust. Although no longer based at its original location, it is recognised as Europe’s first and oldest institution to specialise in mental illnesses. It has been known by various names including St Mary Bethlehem, Bethlem Hospital, Bethlehem Hospital and Bedlam.

The Hospital is closely associated with King’s College London and in partnership with the King’s College London Institute of Psychiatry is a major centre for psychiatric research. It is part of both the King’s Health Partners academic health science centre and the NIHR Biomedical Research Centre for Mental Health.

The word bedlam, meaning uproar and confusion, is derived from the hospital’s prior name. Although currently a modern psychiatric facility, historically it became representative of the worst excesses of asylums in the era of lunacy reform.