10:12am Wednesday 10th March 2010
By David Roberts
As pressure mounts on police over their handling of sex offender Peter Chapman, we reveal how he almost trapped other young girls.
TWO teenage girls narrowly escaped the clutches of Facebook killer Peter Chapman only days before he killed North-East student Ashleigh Hall.
On separate occasions, the convicted sex offender had arranged to meet the two 15- year-olds from Teesside using the same methods he employed to lure the Darlington teenager to her death.
The revelations increase the pressure on Merseyside Police to explain why Chapman, who was registered as a high-risk sex offender, was allowed to move freely for nine months before a nationwide alert was issued.
Yesterday, Home Secretary Alan Johnson also called for Merseyside Police to answer questions about why no action was taken until September, when Chapman had been missing from his registered address since January.
The issue has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is expected to decide today if it will be investigating the matter.
Last night, officers who investigated the Ashleigh Hall case confirmed that in the weeks leading up to her murder, Chapman befriended the two 15-year-olds from Teesside on the internet.
He became their friends on Facebook and also kept in touch using text messages.
Once again, Chapman, who was 32 at the time, masqueraded as a handsome teenager on his Facebook profile.
On Tuesday, October 20 last year, he arranged to meet one of the girls in the car park at the B&Q store in Hartlepool.
However, when the teenager saw Chapman sitting in his car, she ran away.
On the Friday of that week, Chapman arranged to meet the second girl in Stockton – at about the same time he arranged to meet Ashleigh Hall, in Darlington.
However, he did not turn up to either of the dates.
At his sentencing on Monday, it was speculated that Chapman realised Ashleigh would also run away when she saw who he really was.
Therefore, he arranged to meet Ashleigh for a second date on the Sunday, and posed as the teenage boy’s father who had come to pick her up.
Tragically, Ashleigh fell for the ruse and was raped and murdered by Chapman, who was sentenced to a minimum of 35 years in prison on Monday.
Last night, Detective Inspector Mick Callan, of Durham Police, said: “Chapman kept in touch with all the girls by text messages from his phone and via Facebook.
“We traced these two girls during the course of the investigation.
When the first girl ran away, she told her friends what had happened, but did not tell her parents.
“Throughout the investigation Chapman contacted several other young girls, all under the age of 17, who we traced and interviewed. In all these cases, the girls had not told their parents or reported the matter to any authority.
“The incidents in Hartlepool and Stockton were not reported to Cleveland Police so they would not have been aware of what had happened.”
Chapman, who was jailed for seven years in 1996 for raping two prostitutes at knifepoint, was registered to an address on Merseyside.
He had been classified as a high-risk sex offender and was also linked to four other sex crimes, dating back to when he was 15.
Despite this, no action was taken for nine months when it was discovered in January last year that he was not at his registered address.
Home Secretary Alan Johnson called for the force to explain how this happened.
He said: “I think it is right that Merseyside Police actually respond to that.
“We have some of the most stringent laws governing sex offenders in the world and this terrible tragedy... we have to learn lessons from this, whether that is an issue about the monitoring of Chapman – and there is certainly an issue there – whether we need to do more.
“We have got this Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre that is a very, very powerful organisation that we are seeking to give more powers to tackle this.”
In a statement released yesterday, the force said: “Merseyside Police can confirm that an internal review was carried out following the arrest of Peter Chapman in October last year.
“However, in view of the public interest and concerns raised following the conviction of Peter Chapman... the force has referred it to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.”
Politicians in the region are also writing to the Government.
Jenny Chapman, Labour prospective parliamentary candidate for Darlington and Ashleigh’s ward councillor, is contacting Justice Secretary Jack Straw.
She said: “Why did police take nine months to issue a nationwide alert when Chapman left his home in Merseyside?
“Accepting it can never be watertight, why is no attempt made to monitor use of social networking sites by sex offenders as a condition of release?”
Darlington MP Alan Milburn said he would be writing to the Home Secretary.
Mr Milburn said: “I will ask whether anything can be done to prevent any repetition of this truly awful crime and to look at other ways of safeguarding youngsters and people who use the internet.”
Sedgefield MP Phil Wilson is also writing to Mr Johnson .
He said: “This is a tragedy that must not be repeated so, although we have one of the most robust systems for dealing with sex offenders in the world, I have written to the Home Secretary to ask what this case reveals about the way the register operates.”
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