James Bulger's mother 'disgusted' as 1,230 sex offenders are removed from register
An exclusive interview that aired on Good Morning Britain on July 25 spoke about how many sex offenders have managed to remove themselves from the register that they are required to be on. In the past six years alone, 1,230 sex offenders who had been put in the register "indefinitely" have been able to remove their names from it. Of all these offenders, 632 of them have committed crimes against children.
This means that these former offenders no longer have to report their movements to the authorities or even tell the police if they want to leave the country, change their address, or spend more than seven days away from their home. The offenders are also no longer subjected to home visits.
GMB had an interview with Denise Fergus, the mother of the late James Bulger, who was the victim of child killers Jon Venables and Robert Thompson. She has been campaigning against this loophole for some time now and has thanked the talk show for investigating this serious matter. She explained on the show: "I was shocked to read the findings from the Good Morning Britain investigation and I am disgusted that people are able to start a process to be removed from the sex offenders’ register," Express UK reported.
Fergus added: "The figures are very daunting when you look at each county and see the amount of applications that have been made, and how many are actually successful in being removed from the register. Many of these are for offenses against children. That child and their family will be victims for life, so why should the offender have the ability to be removed? Surely, if you are put on the sex offender register for life, your offenses are so serious you should remain on the register for life."
Initially, if a person was sentenced to more than 30 months behind bars for a sex-related crime, their name was put in the sex offenders register for life.
In 2012, however, the law changed and this allowed offenders to appeal after 15 years, eight if they were a juvenile at the time of the offense, to have their name removed from the register.
When GMB submitted a Freedom of Information request, they found that around 1,902 appeals were made and a shocking 1,230 of these offenders were allowed to remove their names from the register. The findings that were published on July 25 included responses from 28 police forces while 17 police forces failed to respond to the request and say how many offenders had removed their names from the register.
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6 am on ITV.