Phillip Patterson

Phillip Patterson, a 34-year-old unemployed man from Burgess Hill, West Sussex, has a long history of sexual offences against children. In September 2011, under his birth name Philip Savidge, he was a serving police officer who admitted to 42 offences involving the making and distribution of 54,323 indecent images of children, including 1,681 prohibited and extreme images. For these crimes, he was sentenced to 27 months' imprisonment and received a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) that severely restricted his access to children, computers, and related digital equipment.

Despite this, Patterson continued his predatory behaviour. In October 2016, he received an eight-week suspended sentence for breaching his sex offender notification requirements. Further breaches came to light in 2018, leading to a 17-week custodial sentence in September of that year. During a routine monitoring visit in 2018 by the West Sussex sex offender monitoring team, officers discovered references to indecent material on his mobile phone. Forensic examination revealed over 100 indecent images of young boys downloaded from the internet, including more than 40 of the most serious category.

The investigation, led by Sussex Police's Paedophile Online Investigation Team (POLIT) in collaboration with the monitoring team, uncovered evidence of Patterson's online grooming and sexual relationship with a teenage boy. The boy confirmed the nature of the relationship when traced by police. Patterson pleaded guilty in October 2019 to three offences of possession of indecent images of children and three offences of sexual activity with a teenage boy. An additional charge of breaching his SHPO was not proceeded with but remains on the court file.

On 19 December 2019, at Hove Crown Court, Judge David Rennie sentenced Patterson to a total of six years' imprisonment. The judge described Patterson as dangerous, stating: 'Children and young people are necessarily vulnerable. Members of the wider community have a responsibility to acknowledge that fact. In two separate ways you demonstrated your indifference to the law. You clearly learned nothing at all from your previous sentence. Some people reach for the idiotic justification that ‘they’re only pictures’. In all of these pictures, a child is having their innocence destroyed. Secondly, the [boy], you groomed him and led him into your dark world of paedophilic abuse. I have no hesitation in concluding that you are dangerous.' Patterson will be a registered sex offender for life, and his SHPO has been extended indefinitely.

Detective Constable Vicky Jones of Sussex Police commented: 'It became clear from our investigations that Patterson has remained a determined sex offender, with a predatory interest in young boys.' The prosecution was authorised by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), highlighting the ongoing efforts to monitor and apprehend repeat offenders in the community.