A PAEDOPHILE on the sex offenders’ register who was secretly living with two children has been jailed.
Colin Wake, 56, married a woman last year and then moved in with her and her two children for around six months, Aldershot magistrates heard on Thursday last week.
He was sent to prison for 12 weeks after he admitted failing to keep police informed of where he was living.
Wake, of Kings Road, Fleet, was released from prison in 2007 after serving seven years of a 12-year sentence handed down at Guildford Crown Court in 2000 for sexually abusing children in the mid-1980s, the court heard.
Since his release, he had been required to stay in contact with specialist police officers to monitor where he was living and what he was doing to help protect the public.
As well as signing the sex offenders’ register, he was required to tell police if he stayed at any other address for more than a week each year.
But when officers made contact this month, they discovered he had secretly married a divorcee and had been living with her and her two children in Farnham.
Serena Edwards, prosecuting, said that while Wake had been free to re-marry, the deception of officers about his new relationship showed a high level of deceit that also led him to keep quiet about his living arrangements.
Wake had also lied to UK Border Agency staff last year when he said he was travelling alone, when in fact he was visiting Spain on honeymoon with his new wife, Miss Edwards said.
“There is a deliberate failure to comply with requirements, and a long period of non-compliance,” Miss Edwards said.
“This isn’t just a couple of days over the seven-day maximum. He’s been staying there for a matter of months.”
Police even found a pair of his slippers at the family’s home, the court heard.
In a police interview, Wake admitted that he had been living with the family, despite knowing it was forbidden without getting the green light from police public protection officers.
He said he had kept quiet about the situation because he was serious about his new relationship and did not want to jeopardise it, the court heard.
Jack Beards, defending, said that Wake had had not told police about his new relationship because he was worried it could affect his new wife’s settlement with her ex-husband following their divorce.
It then became even more difficult as time went on to ‘come clean’ to the police, he said.
“There is absolutely no suggestion that he was doing anything wrong in that respect with regards to the children,” Mr Beards said.
“It’s not right, and he knows it wasn’t right, but those were the reasons for it.”
The solicitor said that Wake had told his new partner about his paedophile history right at the start of their relationship.
He added that Wake’s deception of police had lasted ‘quite a long period of time, but not a very lengthy period of time’.
After retiring to consider their sentence, magistrates told Wake that a prison sentence was ‘inevitable’.
Court chairman Jill Ede said that the level of deception was so great that a jail term was the best way to punish him and to protect the public.
Wake was given 12 weeks in prison, reduced from 18 weeks due to his early admission of guilt.
