‘Hats off to Mum’ for killing paedophile, say abused sons
Boys of mother who knifed sex pest to death speak out for the first time
THE sons of a mother who stabbed their abuser to death have spoken out for the first time to defend the killing.
Sarah Sands, 39, knifed paedophile Michael Pleasted eight times in a ‘determined and sustained attack’ while he was on bail for sexually assaulting her children.
She was jailed for seven and a half years for manslaughter on the grounds that she had lost control after the 77-year-old bled to death in 2014.
Mrs Sands’s eldest son, Bradley, 20, waived his right to anonymity last year to reveal that he was abused by Pleasted on their estate in Silvertown, east London.
But now his twin brothers Alfie and Reece, both 19, have also spoken out to say they too were attacked by the convicted sex offender when they were 11.
Speaking alongside their mother, Bradley told the BBC: ‘I thought hats off, I’m not going to deny it.’
‘It did make us feel safer,’ Alfie added. ‘It didn’t slow down the nightmares. But it did give us a sense of security because you didn’t have to walk down the street thinking he was going to come around the corner.’
Reece said it was ‘nice knowing that he was dead’. But he added: ‘It didn’t stop any afterthoughts, you know, we would often wake up crying [saying] “where’s mum?”’
Mrs Sands befriended Pleasted after moving to the estate as he would sit outside the newsagents. ‘I thought he was a lovely old man,’ she said. ‘I cooked for him, looked after him, always kept him company when I had the time.’
She did not know that Pleasted had changed his name from Robin Moult after receiving 24 convictions for 24 sex crimes spanning three decades.
Pleasted offered to get her eldest a job sorting newspapers at the shop, but instead groomed him and sought access to the twins. The three would go over to his flat, until the twins disclosed to their mother that they had been sexually assaulted by him. A week later her eldest revealed the same had happened to him.
Pleasted was arrested and charged with offences against Mrs Sands’s sons, but while he was awaiting trial the judge gave him bail and said he could return to the estate.
Mrs Sands decided to go around and ask him to plead guilty to save her children the ordeal, but when she was in his apartment she ‘realised I had made a huge mistake’.
‘He was not remorseful in any shape or form,’ she said. ‘He said “your children are lying”. The whole world froze. I had the knife in my left hand and I remember he tried to grab it.’ She maintains she did not intend to kill Pleasted.
A few hours later she handed herself in at a police station with her blood-stained knife and clothing. The judge in the trial later said he did not believe she had ‘rationally thought through what taking a knife might lead to’ but added: ‘I am sure the possibility of its use was in her mind.’
Mrs Sands was initially jailed for three and a half years but Court of Appeal judges ruled it was too lenient as she hadn’t called emergency services to try to save him.
She said her children ‘were angry with me’ and her time inside ‘was awful for them’. She now feels remorse, saying: ‘I bring life into the world. It never occurred to me that I would be guilty of taking life out of the world.’ She was finally released in 2018 and her sons have managed to rebuild their relationship with her.
The boys say, as children, they regretted revealing the abuse. ‘If we had all kept out mouth shut, we would have had our mum, and we would have been going shopping, going to the cinema, doing what a normal 12-year-old would do,’ says Bradley.
But they say they now realise it is important for victims to speak out. ‘It going to be hard, but it does get better,’ Reece said, and Alfie added: ‘You should always come forward.’
‘Didn’t slow the nightmares’