HARTLEPOOL SEX OFFENDER JAILED AFTER STEALING CASH FROM 9 ANCHORS PUB WHERE HE WORKED
A convicted sex offender who stole cash from a bar he worked at has been locked up after pocketing more than £1,500.Amongst the cash that Brian Donnelly stole was £600 which had been raised for charity at The 9 Anchors pub in Seaton Carew.
The 38-year-old bar manager had not told his new employer about his conviction for downloading child sex abuse images before taking on the job, Teesside Crown Court heard.
She added: “He was the sole person to have a key to the safe and that was a high degree of trust.” The court heard how the defendant had been made subject to an eight-month prison sentence suspended for two years in June last year and had not disclosed his conviction to the business owner.
Donnelly, of Borrowdale Street, Hartlepool, pleaded guilty to stealing £1,575 on September 1, last year.
Judge Advocate Tom Mitchell told Donnelly that it was unavoidable that he had to activate his suspended sentence after he breached it so soon after it was imposed.
He said: “I do understand that alcoholism is a terrible disease but it doesn’t often reduce people to the position that you are in – there is an element of choice that goes with it.
“You committed an imprisonable offence shortly into an order which was suspended.
It would have been explained to you the consequences of breaching a suspended sentence order – it always is.
“I can’t make a liar out of judges who tell you that – if someone breaches a suspended sentence then I have to imprison them because the law says I must do so.” Donnelly was jailed for a total of 14 months.
