A paed*ophile who wanted to travel to countries with lower ages of consent has been banned from leaving the UK. During interviews about his crimes, 37-year-old Jason Leonard told police, “If a child is old enough to talk, it’s old enough to have s*ex.” He was given a s*exual harm prevention order that said he couldn’t leave the UK without the chief constable’s permission.
Leonard told a detective that he thinks paedophilia will be accepted in the future in the same way that being gay is accepted now. But Leonard, who was called one of the most dangerous se*xual offenders on record in Lancashire, filed an appeal against that decision. A detective found out that Leonard said his ideal partner would be between 12 and 14 years old and that the only reason he wasn’t acting on his wishes was because his mother was too old.
He had said before that pedophiles are being treated like gay people were “40 years ago, like Jews during the second world war.” He said he wanted to leave the country to get away from all this trouble, but his request was turned down. Leonard went to jail in 2013 because he had downloaded photos of children and then posted them online.
He told the police that he wanted to move to a country with a lower age of consent so he could have a se*xual relationship with a child.
A first order wasn’t enough, so a condition was added that said he couldn’t talk to children without permission from their parents or guardians. He said it was “completely unfair,” but the police did not agree.
DC Andrew Ashworth said, “In the 10 years that I’ve been in this job, I’ve never met a se*xual offender who openly admitted to having paedophilic tendencies.”Mr. Leonard has said that he wants to leave the country because he thinks that the police, the courts, and the government here are after paedophiles. He is very loud and firm about how wrong this is.He thinks that someday, paedophilia will be accepted the same way that homose*xuality is now.
Leonard got 32 months in prison in 2013 for downloading 251 inappropriate pictures of children and then posting them online.
He also said, “[Leonard] has accepted that his close relationship with his mother is one of the things holding him back in his se*xual life.”He has said that he will go abroad to find children when she dies. She is an old woman in her 80s. His mother is the only good thing in his life right now, and that’s only because she’s still alive.’
Leonard’s lawyer, Stuart Kaufman, said that the new SHPO restrictions were “completely unfair.” He told the court, “Mr. Leonard said he would always follow the laws of the country he is in.”
If the age of consent in Thailand, for example, is 15, he would follow that law. He is the Ronseal of se*xual predators. He does what he says he will do. Mr. Leonard’s record doesn’t show that he has had se*xual contact with a child. He has only ever downloaded child porn. ‘Since the SOPO was made in 2013, Mr. Leonard has not changed in any way. A SHPO could have been made at that time, but it wasn’t. ‘If his mother dies, things might change, but right now, it’s way too much.
Leonard’s appeal was turned down by Judge Sara Dod, who said he was “deeply disturbed” and had a “frankly alarming view of paedophilia.” After the hearing, DC Ashworth said, “I’m happy with how things turned out.” Lancashire Police will continue to manage the risk of any registered se*x offender, and this was an unusual and one-of-a-kind case.
