‘CREEPY’ SEX OFFENDER APPROACHED GIRL, 13, AND YOUNG WOMAN AT FERRYHILL BUS STOPS
A ‘creepy’ sex offender approached two females, one a girl of 13, at bus stops in a County Durham town and made sexually explicit suggestions.Mobility scooter-user Thomas Smalley was forbidden from contact with all children under 16 as part of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) imposed after he was convicted of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl.
But Smalley appeared for sentence at Durham Crown Court by video link from HMP Holme House, today (Thursday, January 29) after admitting breaching the SHPO, using threatening and insulting words and behaviour likely to cause distress, and sexual communication with a child.
Charlie Thompson, prosecuting, said all the offences took place a few hours apart in Ferryhill last year.
Mr Thompson said a 14-year-old girl was waiting with a 13-year-old friend at a stop in Ferryhill when Smalley passed by, playing music on his mobility scooter.
He told his victim she was “gorgeous” and despite then saying “I’m not being creepy”, he went on to make various lewd suggestions to the girl.
She told him she was only young and asked him why he would make her do the things he mentioned in his comments.
He then asked her if he could join her on her way home.
Mr Thomson said two hours earlier Smalley had approached a young woman sitting on a bench alone, also awaiting a bus in the town.
He approached on his scooter and told her she was “beautiful”.
She told him he was old enough to be her grandfather.
Smalley then made more lewd comments as to what they could do together, to which she replied: “Oh my God!” The court heard during that incident Smalley was holding and swigging from a can of strong lager.
The defendant was arrested later that evening and was interviewed the following day.
Despite denying the allegations in his police questioning, Smalley pleaded guilty to all three charges at a subsequent appearance before magistrates, who sent the case to the crown court for sentence.
Impact statements were read to the sentencing hearing by both victims.
The younger girl said she had been unable to leave her home for a fortnight after the incident and missed school.
She was worried she might bump into the defendant and has since been provided with a phone with a tracker device.
The girl said she now gets lifts to school and back as she is frightened to walk there on her own.
In her initial statement the older victim said the incident made her feel violated and worries what might have happened but for her reaction of disgust at his comments.
She described the defendant as “creepy” and believes that despite her age, in her early 20s, she looks younger, which may have led the defendant to think she was a teenager.
In a subsequent statement she said she now has a code word to send to her boyfriend if he is out of the area and she finds herself in a similar situation again.
She added that she still feels a sense of “stress and panic” when she is waiting for a bus on her own.
Mr Thompson said the 61-year-old defendant of Ford Terrace, Chilton, has a number of past convictions.
He said, "of note", there was a rape offence in the 1980s for which he served a six-year sentence and the sexual assault on a ten-year-old girl, for which he also received a prison sentence and was made subject of the lifelong SHPO, plus registration as a sex offender.
Mr Thompson added that the defendant also has two breaches of the SHPO, on his record, committed in 2021.
Imposing a 30-month prison sentence, Judge Adams told Smalley: “The lifetime orders remain in place and further breaches will only result in longer and longer sentences being passed.” The judge did not, however, agree to a prosecution application for restraining orders.
He explained that he believed the restrictions in the lifelong SHPO and registration requirements were enough to constrain the defendant.
