Cops Admit 27 Sex Offenders Are Missing

Mar 16 2008 By Mark Aitken Political Editor

It Took Police Two Years To Tell Us This Sex Offender Is Missing.. Yesterday They Had To Admit There Are At Least 26 Others

PAEDOPHILE Martin Cusick is only one of 27 missing sex offenders, police admitted yesterday.

Forces across Scotland confessed they had lost track of the offenders - who were supposed to be under supervision in the community.

The figures emerged after it was revealed that former police officer Cusick, 52, had vanished two-and-a-half years ago.

Children's campaigners and politicians reacted angrily when Strathclyde Police finally released his photo and said they were hunting him.

Cusick, who was jailed in 1996 for abusing three girls - one of them only six - left his home in Clarkston, Glasgow in 2005, without saying where he was going.

He was supposed to be under the scrutiny of Strathclyde's Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (Mappa) system, introduced after Glasgow, boy Mark Cummings, eight, was killed by a sex offender.

A police spokesman confirmed yesterday that 27 of the 3600 registered sex offenders living in the community could not be traced.

But he stressed the number who had vanished varied on a day-to-day basis and were sometimes only missing for hours.

The Association of Chief Police Officers in Scotland could not give a breakdown of which police areas the sex offenders had vanished from.

An ACPOS spokesman added: "The public should be reassured the number does not reflect 27 people who have been unaccounted for over a long period of time. In some cases it is down to them moving address. In others, they are traced very quickly, sometimes within hours of breaching their conditions.

"A proportion of those listed as missing have returned to their own country and their whereabouts are unknown."

Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill this week said he wanted to see the number of missing sex offenders published in the annual reports of regional Mappa groups.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: "We have been working closely with criminal justice agencies to provide a strengthened regime for the management of sex offenders in our communities.

"The vast majority comply with the conditions placed on them.

"It's right that the public has greater access to information about how these arrangements operate - as well as advice on the risks posed by sex offenders and how these can be minimised and community safety enhanced."

How many more are there?

FRANCIS KELLY

THE Airdrie man left Scotland after being freed in 2003.

Kelly, 37, was jailed in 1999 for sex attacks on two women. Despite his strict parole conditions he fled to France and had to be extradited last year to serve more jail time.

GORDON STEWART

ABERDONIAN Stewart, 30, went Awol for a year in 2005 after being jailed for indecent assault and indecency to children.

He handed himself in a year later after his photo was put on a most wanted website.

PAUL REDPATH

REDPATH, of Stranraer, disappeared from a secure hostel in Ulster after being sentenced to three years formolesting a 14-year-old girl in 2006.

The 35-year-old was finally traced to Dublin.