Sexual deviant - guilty of NINETY-EIGHT offences - in appeal against sentence

A pervert with 98 criminal convictions - 38 of them for sex offences against both adults and children - has lost an appeal against the sentence handed down to him last year.
Preston Crown CourtPreston Crown Court
Preston Crown Court

William Alfred Rogers was jailed after police caught him with a hidden laptop, which contained voyeuristic footage of a woman using the toilet at his Chorley home.A court order had banned the 65-year-old from having any devices capable of accessing the internet unless they were made available for police to inspect.

The sicko, formerly of Market Street in Chorley, also breached his sexual harm prevention order (SOPO), given to him in 2009 and amended in 2014, after being left alone with in a car with a young child.

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He was sentenced to 30 months behind bars for hiding the laptop, and a consecutive term of six months for being unsupervised with the girl.

The sexual deviant, who has a history of collecting child abuse images and was last jailed in 2010, took his fight to the Royal Courts of Justice in London, where it was argued his sentence was 'simply far too high'.

But his appeal was thrown out, and a panel of judges concluded: "Overall, the learned judge had to sentence a man with a long history of offending, including for sex offences, who had previously breached his SOPO and had not been deterred from further breaches by the prison sentence which he received in 2010.

"We are unable to say that a total of three years' imprisonment for these two further breaches was manifestly excessive. This appeal accordingly fails and is dismissed."

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Rogers handed over two phones and a computer tower when he was visited by police last April, and was arrested three months later after a friend he asked to upgrade his laptop found covert footage of a woman urinating in his bathroom, the court was told.

The spying victim 'had not wished to make any complaint', it heard.

"True it is that when the laptop computer was examined there were no unlawful images of children and the only material found on it which gave rise to concern was the the recording of the woman urinating," the panel added.

"There had nonetheless been a quite deliberate withholding of that laptop."

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Rogers pleaded guilty to both breaches of his order, but Preston Crown Court was told Rogers continued to 'pose a high risk of harm to women and children'.

And a pre-sentence report said the offences were 'indicative of ongoing deviant sexual issues and the willingness to breach measures designed to manage his risk of further offending'.

Sitting on January 3, His Honour Judge Newell said: "In the 48 years that have lapsed between your first and last sexual conviction, 1968 to 2016, every part of the criminal justice system, and every sentence available to them, has made endeavours to try and, either to deter you, or rehabilitate you, all without success."