Sex offender caught ‘by chance’

A prolific sex offender has been jailed for 11 years, after one of his victims saw him on the street and identified him on Facebook.

Police set up an operation to catch David Hedley, 20, after a series of attacks on lone women and girls, in the West End of Newcastle, over a period of years.

After he was arrested, Hedley told probation officers he had been exposing himself to women since he was 11. Forensics experts had preserved evidence from the scene of some of his attacks, but he was not on any DNA database.

Gavin Doig, prosecuting, told Newcastle Crown Court that investigators had been tracing the offender using familial DNA links, but this was a lengthy process.

Then, a teenager he had attacked as she had walked over a bridge in November of last year, spotted Hedley in the street. She told police she had seen her attacker, “quite by chance in the street”, and had identified him on Facebook, Mr Doig said.

He was arrested in March and later admitted two counts of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child, two counts of sexual assault, sexual assault on a child under 13, exposure, and attempted rape.

He targeted a teenager as she walked home and he threw her to the ground, and she fought him off by biting his fingers.

Hedley, from Newcastle, appeared in court by video link. Recorder Jamie Hill QC said the defendant’s offending increased in seriousness, culminating in the attempted rape in March.

Even though Hedley was remorseful after his attacks, it was not sufficient to stop him swiftly doing it again, the judge said. “It is not surprising that the probation officer has assessed you as posing a high risk of serious harm to girls under the age of 18, and assessing that risk will remain until a considerable amount of work has been undertaken.”

He jailed Hedley for 11 years, with an additional five years’ licence after that, and put him on the Sex Offenders’ Register and imposed a Sexual Harm Prevention Order on him, both indefinitely.