Her address should be published, in the interest of fairness. The vigilante group should also be rounded up and jailed.
Council worker leaked sex offender's address to paedophile hunter's group
Mark Naylor
A heavily pregnant Hull City Council worker leaked the highly sensitive address of a sex offender to an anti-paedophile group. This lead to a 30-strong angry mob turning up outside his new home and threatening to kill him and burn down the house.
Customer services assistant Chloe Carr told the paedophile hunters that the sex offender "deserves all he gets" and was "bloody awful" and "disgusting" but she asked them not to reveal that she had passed on the explosive confidential information about him. The sex offender had to be hurriedly moved to a new address and Carr's unprofessional actions helped to "whip up a frenzy" and were "not a public service at all" because they "destabilised" convicted criminals and risked making them "unpredictable", Hull Crown Court heard.
Carr, 23, of Taylor Avenue, Cottingham, admitted unlawfully disclosing private data to an online website without consent. She denied misconduct in public office as a customer service advisor for Hull City Council by abusing the public's trust and disclosing confidential and personal data between June 4 and July 2, 2020 and that charge was dropped.
Charlotte Baines, prosecuting, said that Carr was employed at the time by an agency to work for the city council and to help direct members of the public to assistance that might be available. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, she was working from home in Anlaby and there was a work chat group in which she could have contact with colleagues.
Another worker sent a message to the group saying that a call had been received from a convicted sex offender, who had contacted the council's customer services team asking for a food parcel to be sent to him as he had been placed into emergency accommodation because his details had been put on Facebook. The address of where he would be living was shared by the chat group but Carr sent details of it to a Hull-based anti-paedophile group..
She told the online paedophile hunters that she had details on the sex offender but asked to be kept anonymous. She said in messages that it was "disgusting" that the sex offender was still in Hull and would be living near a school.
Carr was asked by the anti-paedophile group if she had proof of the man's details and replied: "Yes, everything is 100 per cent" and confirmed that she had his street address. She said that she worked for Hull City Council and there was a reply from the online group asking if she could share that address with them.
Carr sent a screenshot of the sex offender's address and said: "This can't come back to me due to my work." The paedophile hunters asked her for the number of the house. She told the online group that it was "so wrong" to put the man there and added: "I don't believe in it. I will look now."
Carr was thanked by the anti-paedophile group and she was told: "Thank you so much" and that details would be going online shortly. She replied: "Please don't mention it's come from the council" because records were kept and it might "come back to me" because of the disclosure. "The defendant made it abundantly clear that she worked for Hull City Council and the information needed to be kept anonymous," said Miss Baines.
At 6.40pm, the sex offender contacted the police to say that he had received a food parcel from Hull City Council but that people were at his door trying to break into the property and he had been warned to "get out now or they would kill him and burn down the property" There were 30 people in the mob outside the house.
At 7.19pm, the anti-paedophile group contacted Carr on Facebook Messenger to thank her for her information and to say that the sex offender had been moved from the house. Carr replied: "I am so happy. He is bloody awful. Happy to have helped everyone."
The paedophile hunters thanked her. There was further contact during the following days, with further messages about the sex offender.
The police later identified Carr as being involved in the chats after they realised that there was a problem. They went to her then home in Anlaby and seized two laptops.
She told police that, when a colleague shared details of the sex offender, she was "quite angry because she was pregnant" and that after someone in her chat group said that something needed to be done, she took it upon herself to contact the anti-paedophile group and to supply further details. "She said that she knew it was wrong," said Miss Baines. "She was kicked out of the works chat. She wasn't allowed to return to work, one assumes."
Helen Chapman, mitigating, said that the sex offenders that Carr had been referring to were people who had been before the courts, had been found guilty or sentenced and had "done their time and come out" of prison. "These groups exist on Facebook in order to whip up a frenzy," said Miss Chapman.
Carr was heavily pregnant at the time and the messages were exchanged just a fortnight before her son was born in July 2020. He was now aged nearly two. Miss Chapman also stated that the offence was "short-lived but persistent" and Carr was in "something of a vulnerable position" at the time because the boy's father had left her after she told him that she was pregnant.
"It didn't help that she was working from home," said Miss Chapman. Carr was now on Universal Credit and child benefit. "She is just beginning to look for work," said Miss Chapman. Carr had no previous convictions.
Judge Mark Bury said that the offence might not have happened if there had been a "little bit more supervision" of Carr and she had not been working from home. The decision not to proceed with a prosecution under the more serious misconduct in public office offence had been taken after a "thorough review by a number of different people" for the prosecution but it meant that the maximum penalty for the lesser offence that Carr now faced was a fine and not prison.
"You are very lucky about that," said Judge Bury. "The offence that you have committed is, in my view, a very serious one that would have carried a sentence of imprisonment." He told the court: "I would have locked her up."
Judge Bury said that it was not for Carr or anyone else to pass comment and say that the man involved "deserves all he gets and he's bloody awful". The person had to be rehoused again and it led to problems in rehabilitating such people and "destabilising" them, risking them becoming "more unpredictable" and committing offences.
"This is not a public service at all," said Judge Bury. "They had done their punishment. It wasn't for you to give their details out."
It did "not take much imagination" to work out what the anti-paedophile group were planning to do. "The problem that this causes is that it destabilises offenders," said Judge Bury. "It makes them unpredictable and more likely to commit offences that everyone else is trying their hardest to prevent them from doing. It's not doing a public service at all. It's a huge disservice.
"I am quite satisfied that you knew what you were doing because you said you didn't want your name to be mentioned because you would be sacked, which, of course, you were. I hope this has been a lesson. If you work in the public sector again, you just have to remember that you have a grave responsibility with public details. You thought you were helping. You were not."
Carr was fined £500, to be paid at £50 a month. After the hearing, she left the court building giggling and joking loudly with two female supporters and headed straight across the road and into the pub opposite the court.
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