A ‘DANGEROUS’ sex offender serving time in a prison near Uttoxeter made hoax phone calls from inside jail to Staffordshire Police’s Crimestoppers, a judge has heard.
Steven Gilbert had officers investigating totally fabricated reports of rape and sexual abuse of young children and an elderly woman.
One mother was shocked and horrified when police turned up at her home to check out Gilbert’s false allegations.
Pat Sullivan, prosecuting, told Stafford Crown Court Gilbert made a total of eight hoax phone calls to Crimestoppers using the prisoners’ phone booth inside HMP Dovegate in Marchington.
At the time of the calls, September last year, Gilbert was serving a 10-year sentence for indecently assaulting an 80-year-old woman and gagging another woman he tried to drag off in to bushes.
He was convicted in 2003 and released on August 7 this year having served the full 10-year tariff, but Judge Michael Cullum sent him back to jail for 16 months after branding Gilbert ‘a dangerous man’.
Gilbert, aged 29, of Izaak Walton Close, Stafford admitted a charge of causing public nuisance.
The judge told him: “You were in custody for a very long time and despite all the assistance you received, for the purposes of clear sexual gratification you committed this offence, pretending to be the abuser of a young child and pretending to report the rape of an elderly woman.
“In my judgement you are a dangerous man.” Mr Sullivan said the police were obliged to investigate the reports, which all turned out to be false.
Gilbert claimed that a three-year-old girl and a five-year-old had been sexually assaulted and a 75-year-old woman raped.
The defendant gave the names and addresses of real people. One woman was ‘visibly concerned’ about the phoney allegations and there were concerns for the welfare of an 80-year-old woman.
Miss Joanne Clark, defending, said Gilbert made eight phone calls over a period of 11 days and then stopped.
He had spent most of his adult life in custody, but since his release in August this year had not committed any further offences and had been doing charity work for Stafford Furniture Exchange.
