Category Archives: Shropshire

Daniel Lees – Ellesmere

19 Saturday Jun 2021

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June 2021

Shropshire man avoids prison after being caught by online paedophile hunters

A Shropshire man who had sordid online chats with someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl has narrowly avoided jail.

Daniel Lees was caught by a paedophile hunting group who reported him to the police in June 2019.

When his phone was examined officers discovered that he had previously had social media conversations with someone he believed was a 13-year-old girl in America.

The latest offences involved a 14-year-old and took place in Crosby, Merseyside, in 2019

Liverpool Crown Court heard that it was not known if that person was a real girl or not but Lees, of Watergate Street, Ellesmere, changed his mind about going to meet her.

Sentencing him on his 46th birthday on Friday, Judge Neil Flewitt QC told him: “It’s not a good way to be passing it.”

“For a period of days in the spring of 2019 when you were at a low ebb as a result of tragedy in your personal life and other issues you were facing and when drinking heavily you committed three of the offences sent this court.”

He told Lees: “You had the good sense to admit your offending in interview. You pleaded guilty at the first opportunity.

David Watson, prosecuting, said that paedophile hunting group ‘Predator Closure’ set up decoy profiles on various social media sites. These included a girl called ‘Cara’.

Lees contacted her on May 30, 2019 and when she said she was 14 he said “it was still ok to chat” and the conversation continued the next day.

“He asked Cara if she liked older guys and said he liked her pictures and fancied her.”

He asked for a photograph and she sent him a picture of a 14-year-old girl. Their chat then moved to WhatsApp and he sent her a lewd photograph of himself which he then deleted. He asked her to send him topless pictures of herself.

When his home was searched, checks of his electronic devices revealed chats between him and females identifying themselves as under 16.

The fourth charge related to chat with a purported 13-year-old girl in America in 2015 and 2016.

Unemployed Lees pleaded guilty to attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child, two offences of causing a child aged between 13 and 15 to engage in sexual activity and attempting to cause a child aged 13 to 15 to look at an image of sexual activity.

Lees was jailed for two years, suspended for two years. He was also ordered to carry out 240 hours unpaid work and 30 days rehabilitation activities.

He was put on the Sex Offenders Register and made the subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order both for ten years.

Craig Stormey – Telford

07 Monday Jun 2021

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June 2021: Last known location was Telford 2019

July 2015

British soldier jailed for raping girl, aged 6, during Army adventure camp in Austria

A British soldier has been jailed for nine years for drunkenly raping a six-year-old girl in her bedroom while stationed on an adventure course with his unit. 

Craig Stormey, 30, was on an alpine skiing course with the 7th Parachute Regiment Royal Horse Artillery in the Stubai Valley, Austria, when the horrific assault took place.

Today Judge Norbert Hofer said it was ‘impossible’ to find an appropriate punishment given the severity of the attack and ranked it among the ‘worst kind of abuse of a child’s physical well-being’.

The court at Innsbruck, in the province of Tyrol, heard that the attack took place in November 2014 when the Afghanistan veteran drunkenly entered an unlocked house, stripped off and started to perform sexual acts on the sleeping child.

The girl’s father told the court: ‘I was lying in my bed and saw a figure holding a child in his arms.

‘I was half asleep and first thought it was my wife but then I realised she was lying next to me.

‘Then I saw the naked stranger in another room with my daughter. I completely flipped and hit him several times in the face.’

During the fight, his wife and their daughter fled the house as he called the police.

He added: ‘Our daughter has managed to cope with the incident relatively well. But she has a very good memory.’

Police arrested the accused in the house and since then he had been in detention in Innsbruck prison while awaiting trial.

Medical investigators examined the little girl and backed her claims of the events.

Stormey apologised to the girl and her parents in court

Timothy Schofield – Telford

19 Wednesday May 2021

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May 2021

‘Dangerous’ paedophile jailed for nearly a decade for child sex crimes

A ‘dangerous’ child sex predator who groomed his young victim over a ‘significant amount of time’ has been sentenced

Timothy Schofield, aged 27, of Ken Jones Close, Telford, was jailed for eight years at Shrewsbury Crown Court on Monday, May 17, after he was found guilty following a trial.

The court heard the sentences related to five counts of child sexual offences including grooming and inciting a child of under 13 to send indecent images or have sexual intercourse

Schofield, who was 24 at the time, sought out the girl online in early 2018 and tried to ingratiate himself with her, pretending he was only 17 himself. She was aged under 13

Over a period of about six months the paedophile groomed her online, encouraging her to send him intimate photographs and on one occasion collecting her in his car in Shrewsbury to be with her

Richard Groome – Taunton

14 Friday May 2021

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May 2021

Paedophile sentenced to nine years

An 80-year-old paedophile who abused boys he was supposed to care for has been jailed for sex offences dating to the 1980s.

Richard Groome, now of Taunton, Somerset, sexually assaulted a vulnerable boy while he was working in a senior role at a boarding school in south Shropshire more than 30 years ago.

The boy had been sent to the school in Shropshire having had a difficult relationship with his family and being put into care.

He had enjoyed his time there and began developing socially before being victimised by Groome, Shrewsbury Crown Court heard.

His crimes went undiscovered, but in the year 2000 at Chester Crown Court he was convicted of unrelated but similar indecent assaults against three teenage boys, those offences also dating to the 1980s but before the Shropshire offence.

He was jailed for eight years in 2000 but it wasn’t until 2017 that he would be interviewed by police in connection with the assaults on the boy in Shropshire.

He denied any wrongdoing and the matter finally came to trial earlier this year. Groome was convicted by a jury of two charges of indecent assault and another serious sexual offence against the boy.

Judge Anthony Lowe told him: “One struggles to imagine a worse type of abuse of trust, where somebody is in your de facto care because they are troubled and have problems, and they are then taken advantage of.

“At the time he was somebody who was struggling to come to terms with his various problems. [At the school] he seemed to have the potential for making some considerable improvements in the way he was developing.”

But Groome’s abuse “effectively destroyed any positive work being done” and was “perverse in every sense of that word”, the judge said.

Prosecutor Mr Graham Russell told the court that the victim attributes his drug abuse problems, paranoia and stress to the abuse he suffered. He constantly worries for the welfare of his own children, the court heard.

The judge handed down a nine-year prison sentence, of which Groome will serve two thirds before being released on licence.

Spencer Radford – Wem

19 Monday Apr 2021

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April 2021

Assistant head, 49, is banned from teaching after having sexual relationship with 14-year-old female pupil for over a year

An assistant headteacher has been banned from teaching for having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old pupil.

Spencer Radford, 49, was reported to Cheshire police in 2018 by one of his former pupils, who claimed to have had an ongoing sexual relationship with her teacher for more than a year.

The investigation was dropped by Cheshire police, but a subsequent investigation by the government’s Teacher Regulation Agency found the allegations to be proven.

Radford was found to have had oral sex with the young girl after inviting her to his home.

He also arranged an intimate meet up with her in his school store cupboard, had the young schoolgirl stay over at his house, and told another pupil that he was in love with the girl.

Radford had the young schoolgirl stay over at his house, and told another pupil that he was in love with the girl.

She told the investigation that outside of school ‘they would be a couple’, but that they were ‘always looking over their shoulders’.

A Cheshire Police spokesman told MailOnline there are no plans to reopen the case, and the victim involved ‘did not support prosecution’.

The teacher of 26 years had worked at Thomas Adams School in Wem, Shropshire, since 2006 and was most recently employed there assistant headteacher.

However, the relationship with the pupil took place while employed at his previous school, believed to be in Cheshire, where he worked between 1995 and 2006.

The relationship had begun in the late 1990s, starting when the girl was 14.

The former pupil, referred to by the Teacher Misconduct Panel as Pupil A, said the relationship ‘fizzled out’ before her 16th birthday.

The report from the panel states: ‘Pupil A in her written evidence said that when she was at Mr Radford’s house she spent time snuggled on the sofa with him watching films. As the relationship progressed Pupil A said that they progressed to kissing.’

They then moved on to sexual activity, the report says.  

‘Pupil A told the panel that it ”took a long time, like any normal relationship would, the only thing not normal was the teacher and pupil part and the age gap, everything else was normal everything progressed really slowly – I was young, it was all firsts it probably took a long time”.

‘Pupil A in her evidence said she and Mr Radford thought that when she left school ”they would be a couple”.’

The pupil, who reported Radford three years ago when in her 30s, said at the time as a schoolgirl it ‘felt normal’ but after looking back she ‘realised it wasn’t normal’.

Radford admitted to the allegations of exchanging text messages with the pupil, giving lifts to her and entering the girl’s home with her.

Allegations of sexual activity, staying overnight with the pupil and commenting that he was in love with her were denied by Radford but found proven by the Teaching Regulation Agency misconduct panel.

As a result he has been banned from teaching indefinitely at any school, sixth form, relevant youth accommodation or children’s home in England.