Sex offender magician disappears

SURREY ADVERTISER (U.K.)

A POPULAR children’s entertainer, who was exposed as a sex offender this week, has fled after his Leatherhead home was trashed by vigilantes.

Kevin Hart, whose stage name is Billy Wand, was arrested by Surrey Police last year after pornographic images of children were found on his computer – for which he was punished with just a caution.

This week, locals took the law into their own hands and vandalised the 49-year-old’s Kingston Road home, smashing his windows with rocks and spray-painting the word “Paedo” in red over his front door and on the side of the house.

Mr Hart, who appeared at the TV programme Blue Peter’s 40th birthday celebration and was signed up to help with the Government’s Sure Start scheme for children under five, was nowhere to be seen this week.

In the past he has worked at events across Surrey as a children’s entertainer and magician and even performed his famous Punch and Judy show in front of dozens of children at Wotton Village fete in August last year – just a month before his arrest.

Police officers raided his home and seized his computer in September after tracking him down though his credit card details.

A Surrey Police spokesman said: “A 49-year-old man from Leatherhead was arrested on September 5, 2007, on suspicion of making indecent images of children.

"On Friday, October 12, 2007, he was cautioned and placed on the sex offenders’ register for two years.

“Taking into account his previous record and the number of pictures found, the CPS found it appropriate to give a caution in this case.”

He would not comment on the number or seriousness of the images found.

The police force would not comment directly about the attack on the magician’s home this week but said its Public Protection Risk Management Unit (PPRMU) was looking into the case as a whole.

A spokesman added: “Surrey Police works with the Probation Service, Prison Service and other agencies under Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) to manage the risk posed to the public by sexual and violent offenders who have been rel-eased from prison on licence or are registered sex offenders.

“We cannot discuss the circumstances of individual cases but every person subject to MAPPA receives a full risk assessment, which takes into account the perceived risk to local people and the views of the community."

[Ed: In the midst of a witchhunt even greater in scale than that underway in the U.S., comes this tale from our English neighbors that serves as an additional, chiliing, confirmation of the obvious purposes to which "public shaming" and public registries are being put. It would seem the level of hysteria in the U.K. has overtaken all reason and that the mobs may now give full expression to their most vile instincts. But the U.S. is not far behind...]