Mark McLaughlin
Edinburgh Evening News
January 23, 2009
POLICE in the Lothians have lost track of six registered sex offenders, it has emerged.
Five of the offenders are foreign nationals, who are thought to have disappeared overseas, and one other has failed to notify officers of a change of address.
Police today refused to names any of the missing offenders.
But Detective Inspector Helen Boyle, police member of the multi-agency Amethyst Team responsible for monitoring sex offenders in the Lothians, assured the public that the missing offender still in the country presented a "low risk" of re-offending and that they were following "a positive line of inquiry" to find him.
She added: "We have a number of assessment tools that we use, based on research and the behaviour of the offender, which allow us to judge if this person is likely to re-offend and what the risk to the public would be.
"When an offender fails to update his details on the register as required we have a number of options available to us, including circulating his details to other police forces to make enquiries on our behalf, or to allow them to apprehend him if he's arrested or spoken to by police or our partners in health, social work, homeless accommodation and housing.
"Circulating his details to the press is also an option that is available to us, however, some of the details about the offender may be sub-judice and this would have to be taken into consideration by the procurator fiscal, alongside the risk he poses and the charges he faces, before he would be identified."
Failure to update the sex offenders register is a crime in itself and anyone charged with breaching the terms of the register would be subject to court action.
Conservative justice secretary Bill Aitken defended the police's decision not release the name of the offender.
He said: "If this man was responsible for the rape of a child, for example, then I would be demanding his name be released immediately, but if the police say he does not present a high risk to the public then they should be allowed to deal with it quietly."
Registered sex offenders (RSOs) have to check-in with police every year, register a change of address within three days and inform police if they are away from home for more than seven days.
DI Boyle added: "It would be wrong to say that these people have 'escaped' from the police as these people are offenders who would normally live in the community.
"The register includes a number of foreign nationals who, if they offend in this country, are placed on the sex offenders register.
"The sex offenders register does not allow us to remove their names from the register even if they have left the country, which is why these five foreign nationals have remained on the list."
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