A child sex offender broke a court order for an eighth time by flying to Portugal with his fiancée.
Gary Healey flew off to Faro with his fiancée without notifying police he had obtained a passport or he was leaving the country. Daniel Bramhall, prosecuting, told Liverpool Crown Court how the Home Office contacted police on October 22 last year about Healey having left the country.
Five days later, Healey’s sex offender manager spoke to him on the phone. Healey, 46, had been placed on the sex offenders' register for seven years in 2017 after being convicted of inciting a girl under 16 to engage in sexual activity, which earned him a suspended prison sentence.
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Healey confirmed he had obtained a passport on December 8, 2020 and failed to notify police about it. He voluntarily attended Birkenhead police station and admitted to the breach and also said he failed to notify the force about going abroad.
The court heard he has three previous convictions for 11 offences. The other seven convictions are for breaching the requirement of the Sexual Offenders’ Register by not notifying the authorities he was homeless.
Healey, of Osborne Road, Birkenhead, pleaded guilty to two offences of breaching the SOR order but narrowly escaped being sent straight to jail after a judge heard how he has recently been engaging with support workers. Judge Gary Woodhall imposed a six month prison sentence suspended for 15 months and ordered him to carry out 15 days rehabilitation activities.
He said: "You have this hanging over you to make sure you continue to engage with those support services."
The judge also imposed a three month curfew with an electronic tag for three months between 9pm-6am and ordered him to pay £340 prosecution costs. Anna Duke, defending, said that his probation officer confirmed that he has been engaging with his support workers.
Judge Woodhall told Healey, whose fiancée sat in the public gallery, that the pre-sentence report revealed when his partner’s father was terminally ill his dying wish was for the couple to have a foreign holiday.
He encouraged Healey, who had never been abroad, to get a passport and after his death they went to Faro.
The judge said that Healey had long term drug problems but there has now been consistent engagement with community support services “and you have demonstrated your motivation to engage with the problem.”
He added that the defendant now has stable accommodation and strong family ties and is assessed as a low risk of re-offending.
