Manhunt for escaped sex f iend who entered house through catf lap
A DANGEROUS sex offender was on the loose last night after he escaped from an open prison.
Paul Robson, 56, fled from HMP North Sea Camp, where he was serving a life sentence for sexually assaulting a 23-year-old woman while holding a knife to her throat.
A national manhunt is under way with police saying the serial offender presents a ‘particular danger to women and young children’. His youngest victim was an eightyear-old girl.
Officers said Robson, from Newcastle, could be ‘anywhere in the country’ after he was reported missing from the prison in Boston, Lincolnshire, around 7am on Sunday.
Justice Secretary Dominic Raab faced serious questions yesterday as Robson is among the prison’s 128 criminal absconders in a decade. There were four escapes there last year.
Labour’s justice spokesman Steve Reed said he wrote to Mr Raab to ask ‘why such a dangerous criminal was... in an open prison’. Matt Warman, Tory MP for Boston and Skegness, said he had ‘repeatedly’ raised concerns about the prison’s security.
Robson was moved to the category D open prison a year ago after two individuals provided expert testimony supporting the move, the Parole
Board has said. The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) last night refused to disclose the reasons why Robson was transferred to an open prison.
The sex offender was branded a ‘menace to females’ and jailed for a fourth time in 2000 for attacking the 23year-old victim after he broke into her home through a cat flap. Robson tied her up, put a pillowcase over her head and held a knife to her throat as he sexually assaulted her. As well as young women, Robson has targeted girls since the late 1980s.
In his twenties he was jailed for two years for assaulting a 12-year-old girl in Lancaster. While on early release, he abducted and assaulted an eight-year-old girl in Morecambe and was jailed for eight years, serving five.
On his release in 1995, he approached two nine-yearold girls in the street who managed to flee. The following year he was jailed again for attacking a 31-year-old woman in Reading.
Police are warning people not to approach Robson, who is slim, white and with a long goatee. He ‘may be wearing a black long-sleeved Berghaus top, dark bottoms and a woollen beanie. An MoJ spokesperson said Robson will return to a closed prison upon his recapture.
‘A menace to females’