April mum’s anger at human rights that let sex beasts off register
THE family of murdered April Jones have reacted with fury after being told it would breach the human rights of paedophiles if they were on the sex offenders’ register for life.
The mother of the five-year-old, who was snatched outside her home by a sex predator just hours after he had been looking at child abuse images, is fighting to change the law so that criminals are never taken off the register.
But yesterday it emerged that any attempt to see all sex offenders remain there forever would violate their right to a family life under the Human Rights Act.
The family also reacted with anger as it was revealed none of the internet providers have replied to their calls for tougher policing of child pornography.
April’s killer Mark Bridger had been looking at child abuse images just hours before he abducted April as she played outside her home in Machynlleth, Mid Wales in October 2012.
Her body has never been found and Bridger refused to say what he did with her remains before he was sentenced to life for her abduction and murder.
April’s mother is now applying to see Bridger in prison to confront him about the murder. A petition launched by the family calling for sex offenders to remain on the register for life has reached more than 126,000 signatures, triggering a Westminster debate on the issue yesterday.
But Home Office minister Sarah Newton said a Supreme Court ruling meant sex offenders had the opportunity to review their place on the register.
She said: ‘In 2010 there was a Supreme Court ruling that prevented us from not giving opportunities for sex offenders to ever be removed from that register.
‘We were told there must be opportunities for them to be considered and it was this objection about their human rights not to be denied a family life.’ Currently the length of time that someone is on the register is determined by their sentence, making it highly unlikely that Bridger would ever be removed from it.
Yesterday April’s mother Coral said told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: ‘What about the children who have gone through what the paedophile has done to them?
‘Does that child get a second chance?’ She added: ‘Bridger had over 500 images on his computer, and if the police knew about that, April would have been here today.
‘I don’t think the sentences are enough for the crime. Bridger looked at these photos, and a couple of hours later my daughter was murdered... ‘I’d ask him – why? What made you look at these images, what made you download them, and what made you go from looking at the images to murdering a little girl?’
April’s sister Jazmin said search engines had failed to respond to their campaign to clean up the web, adding: ‘Internet search engines know what you’ve been looking for, so they could actually forward that on to the police and say “this has popped up in this area, can you take a look at it?”’ We’ve heard nothing from the search engines, absolutely nothing’.
The number of sex offenders in prison has reached 13,000, which is a 9 per cent rise on last year.