RYEDALE MAN JAILED FOR RACIAL, SEXUAL AND VIOLENT OFFENCES
Joshua McGuigan, 32, caused disturbances or problems in Norton, Ryedale, and Whitby, York Crown Court heard.Kelly Clarke, prosecuting, said he was racially abusive towards staff and smashed glasses in the Derwent Arms in Church Street, Norton.
When he was thrown out of the pub, he warned “watch your backs” and threatened to burn a property down.
On a separate occasion, he told a group of 15-year-old girls enjoying a birthday party by the seaside at Whitby he would rape them and exposed himself.
On a third occasion, when he was arrested at his home address near Pickering, he tried to head-butt a police officer and get him in a headlock by grabbing him round the neck.
After being taken to custody in a police station, he pushed a second officer into a door frame and entangled his legs round him before damaging the cell by urinating in it.
The cell had to be taken out of use and deep cleaned.
Despite being convicted of a range of offences and being sentenced for them, McGuigan was still at liberty on January 10 this year when he was arrested for the last time.
Ms Clarke said police caught him at 2.06am in a Scarborough street with a can of alcohol and a knife he had just taken to a house where he claimed a cocaine dealer was operating.
He alleged he had given her £100 but not received the drug and “there was a lot of people trying to hurt him”.
"This man has had a lot of chances," said the Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris.
"I gave him a deferred sentence – giving him a chance – and then I gave him a community order.
Now he is going to a drug den armed with a knife." Defence barrister Christian Mills said: "This is a rather sad case.
He will only accept custody.
Hopefully it will give him the chance to turn his life around.
I ask you to keep the sentence as short as possible." McGuigan pleaded guilty to carrying a knife in public on January 10, 2026 and was also resentenced for the offences for which he received the community order: aggravated racial abuse at the Derwent Arms on May 3, 2024, assaulting police emergency workers and criminal damage on August 18, 2024, and indecent exposure and two public order offences committed in Whitby on September 14, 2024.
The judge jailed McGuigan for 16 months.
“That may just be long enough to get yourself clean,” he told McGuigan.
“You come from a good family.
They have done their best for you.
What you need is separation from the street – and you recognise that.” Mr Mills said McGuigan had been sectioned when he was 22 for mental health problems.
When he was sentenced for the indecent exposure, he had been put on the sex offenders register, which had upset and depressed him.
He had lost motivation to do the community order.
He was also without a job, having worked up to December 2025.
