Predatory paedophile is branded ‘a risk to the public’

A PREDATORY paedophile from Derby sexually asaulted a very young girl who found the courage to speak to the police about it only years later.

A judge told Douglas Curtis he could have owned up to what he did when he was sentenced to six years in prison in 2017 for other child offences he committed around the same time. But he chose not to and has now been described as “a risk to the public”.

Handing the 34-year-old a new six-year sentence, Recorder Jason Macadam said: “You are and were a practising and predatory paedophile who actively seeks satisfaction from paedophilic material.

“You have an obvious sexual preoccupation with children and have an anti-social deviant attitude towards women.

“You targeted this girl, she was particularly vulnerable and you could have cleared the decks and admitted these offences (against her) back in 2017 when you were convicted of other (child sex) offences.

“You pose a risk to the public and I conclude that you would carry on committing sexual offences given the opportunity if you thought you could get away with it.”

Caroline Bradley, prosecuting, said Curtis was jailed for six years in April 2017 after admitting charges of inciting children to engage in sexual activity.

She said on that occasion, between 2014 and 2016, he created several fake Facebook profiles to send sexual messages to young girls and their mothers. They included him sending indecent images.

Miss Bradley said at around the same time the defendant sexually abused a young Derbyshire girl on “at least three occasions”.

The prosecutor said: “She reported it to her parents at the time but no action was taken as she did not want to speak about it (to the police).

“But a number of years later she disclosed to her school that she had previously been sexually abused.”

Miss Bradley said Curtis, of Northumberland Street, Normanton, was arrested, interviewed and denied he had touched the girl sexually.

But he later pleaded guilty to sexual assault of a girl aged under 13.

The prosecutor said: “In her victim impact statement she says ‘what he did to me caused me to feel disgusted about myself as a person and even now I hardly go out.’”

Steve Taylor, mitigating, said his client was released halfway through his last sentence in March 2019 and first lived in Bass Street, Derby, then in Alvaston and now Normanton.

He said: “He has a diagnosed autistic condition – Asperger’s syndrome – and these matters did not come to light until a long time after the event. (These) are deplorable contact offences...but he did not force himself on her.”

Curtis’ six-year sentence is made up of three years in custody and a three-year extended licence. It means he will be released from prison two-thirds of the way through the custodial element, that is. after two years. He was also handed a 10-year sexual harm prevention order and will be on the sex offender register for 10 years.