Vanessa George among paedophiles hiding past by lawfully changing their name

Dressed in an anonymous black outfit on a suburban street, Britain’s worst female paedophile is utterly inconspicuous as she carries her shopping home, occasionally peering at her small mobile phone.

And that is just how middle-aged Vanessa George wants it to be.

Her distinctive blonde hair has gone. So has her real name, changed before she left prison last year after serving ten years for sexually assaulting as many as 64 children — including toddlers and even babies — at Little Ted’s nursery school in Plymouth, Devon, before sharing the images with her male paedophile lover.

The photograph of George was taken earlier this year in the West Midlands where she then lived at a half-way house for released offenders. 

None of the public knows whether she has since moved to another address — and probably never will find out.

For George is one of hundreds of registered sex offenders who have changed their identities according to a revealing report this week. 

Many have used an easy deed poll process, which takes 15 minutes to complete online for a fee as little as £15. It means they can rename themselves and continue to abuse children under their new guise.

The scale of the deception is huge, according to child protection organisation Safeguarding Alliance which is petitioning Parliament to ‘revoke the right of registered sex offenders to change their name by deed poll’. 

The Alliance discovered, through Freedom of Information (FoI) requests to 43 police forces in England and Wales, that 1,349 sex offenders have — as required by law — notified the police about changing their name by deed poll within three days.

But, worryingly, 913 other offenders have simply disappeared using new names without informing the authorities.

‘When sex offenders change their names, they effectively go under the radar,’ said Safeguarding Alliance spokeswoman Emily Konstantas this week. ‘They can obtain a new passport, a new driving licence, a new National Insurance number, and effectively erase their past.

‘They are often manipulative by nature. There must be a system that’s not just reliant on a sex offender telling the truth to police.’

The shocking number of paedophiles masking their past was highlighted by Sky News in a report. Now, the Mail has investigated cases where convicted paedophiles have used deed poll name changes to hide former crimes from the police — and even the British courts — when they are charged with a subsequent, and similarly horrific, child-sex offence.

One of the most disturbing cases centres on a sex offender called Terry Price, who conducted offences over three decades. He has altered his name five times in an attempt to cover up his crimes.

Price’s victims include a mother named Della Wright, now 47, who was repeatedly raped by him from the age of six in the Eighties. 

After having a family of her own, Ms Wright found the courage to report the crimes to police. She found, to her horror, that Price had changed his name to Robert McEwan.

Ahead of his 2016 trial, Ms Wright’s attacker had switched to an even newer name, Mr Mac. It meant he was unable to enter a plea because the charges were against Robert McEwan.

The court process was disrupted for several weeks as the matter was untangled.

Mr Mac (aka Terry Price, Robert McEwan and a string of other aliases) was convicted in November 2017 of raping Ms Wright. He was sentenced to 22 years in custody.

Now, Ms Wright has waived her right to anonymity to highlight the loophole her attacker used to delay justice. She says: ‘This person is a prolific offender. Even as recently as 2016, he was allowed to change his name again in prison. I just thought how many “relationships” has he had? How many jobs has he had around children?’

The misuse of deed polls by paedophiles makes a mockery of rules to check sex offenders. 

Sarah’s Law, created following the West Sussex abduction and murder of eight-year-old Sarah Payne in 2000 by paedophile Roy Whiting, is a scheme to allow parents or carers to ask police if someone with access to children has a history of under-age sex offences.

But Sarah’s Law is circumvented by the deed poll swindle. ‘If you go (to police) and ask has Joe Bloggs got a history? Well, no, he doesn’t — because his name is Dave Jones now,’ explains Ms Wright.

The Mail has delved into many cases where paedophiles have cynically masked their true identities. They include James Haw who spent six years amassing tens of thousands of ‘disturbing and graphic images’ of child abuse before changing his name to start a relationship with a single mum on Tinder, the dating website.

Haw, who became known as James France, broke the law by not telling police of the identity switch. He was arrested after confessing his history to his new partner, who reported him to the local force. 

He had taken out credit cards and applied for a passport under his new name. At the time, two years ago, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, said he had broken laws to protect children from convicted paedophiles.

Then there was paedophile Steven Harrison, 44, who changed his name to that of ex-Liverpool football star Steve Gerrard, scoured dating websites using the bogus identity and started relationships with mothers across Britain who had soccer-loving sons. 

Photos found in 2017 by detectives on his laptop showed him grinning in family poses alongside women and their children, some in football kits given to them by ‘Gerrard’.

The ruse was discovered when a woman in Bedfordshire became suspicious over the tissue of lies Harrison put out to cover up his previous convictions. 

The paedophile was about to take her 11-year-old son on a trip, and had threatened the child that ‘something bad would happen to him’ if he revealed abuse.

He was jailed for ten years for grooming youngsters.

Michael Joslin, another released paedophile, changed his name by deed poll and moved in with a mother of two children aged nine and five before being caught with sordid sex abuse images on his computer.

He was calling himself Michael Glover and using a driving licence and bank cards in that name. While the youngster’s mother was in hospital, said prosecutors at a 2018 court hearing in Maidstone in Kent, ‘he even bathed’ them.

The list goes on. Last year Keith Ryman, 76, was hauled before York Crown Court for befriending a couple and offering to care for their daughter in 1968. He sexually assaulted the child and she reported him to North Yorkshire police as an adult.

Police discovered Ryman had previously been called Keith Leggett and changed his name in 1980 by deed poll. Although officers said the reason for the switch was unclear, Ryman committed numerous sexual assaults on children after getting rid of his old identity.

In April this year, a paedophile who was controversially flown back to Britain after release from a Cambodian prison was jailed for 12 years for child abuse offences he had carried out before leaving the UK. They included cannabis being given to young boys who were then assaulted on camping trips.

Richard Fruin, 42, only recently changed his name by deed poll to Ethan Dashner, a moniker he insisted on using legally at Bristol Crown Court during his trial. 

As many as 450 paedophiles are arrested every month in Britain as the internet drives an explosion in child-sex abuse, according to child-safeguarding police. But many more are disguising themselves using deed poll name changes to evade the law.

This week I discovered how easy it is to alter a person’s identity. I changed my name in 24 hours. It was ridiculously, frighteningly, simple. I began the process at 2pm on Tuesday and received a document in a folder with an impressive front page saying: ‘Deed of Change of Name (Deed Poll) of Susan Odette Reid now Susan Brown’ at 11 the next morning.

I paid £43 for the document, including express guaranteed delivery postage by the Royal Mail. The transaction appeared on my bank account statement as ‘legal services’.

The package through my door was in an envelope marked Susan Brown. I had, it seemed, already changed my name.

Inside the folder was a page-long declaration which I had to sign in both the old and new name in the presence of a witness. The neighbour next door would do. The friend in the wine bar. My colleague at work. No one asks.

The declaration says: ‘I absolutely and entirely renounce, relinquish and abandon the name of Susan Odette Reid and assume, adopt and determine to take and use from the date hereof the name in substitution of my former name Susan Odette Reid.’ Another clause of this legal declaration says: ‘I authorise and require all persons at all times to designate, describe and address me by the adopted name of Susan Brown.’

Just how this paperwork can help paedophiles was illustrated at a court hearing this January. 

A 36-year-old, who admitted possessing 1,439 images and videos of sexualisation and abuse of children, had created a new identify for himself by deed poll and his lawyer insisted his new name be used in court.

Christopher Barlow was now calling himself Matthew Black and, absurdly, had to be referred to throughout the case as such. He was found guilty and is now awaiting a sentencing hearing at Reading Crown Court.

Only this week it emerged that John Beirne, a convicted paedophile and ex-mayor of St Helens, Merseyside, requested his name to be changed on the electoral roll to John Blondel.

He hoped it would allow him to run for election as an independent councillor in Wigan, Lancashire, until officials uncovered his duplicity. Sex offenders are not allowed to stand in local elections and Beirne was jailed last Thursday for failing to inform police of his name change, thought to have been by deed poll.

Sounding a loud alarm about this horror story is Robert Halfon, MP for Harlow, Essex and chairman of the Parliamentary Education Select Committee. He is spearheading the campaign to stop paedophiles using the system to obscure their identity and slip back into society.

Mr Halfon says: ‘Once their name has been changed, sex offenders can secure official documentation in the new name, potentially allowing them to travel abroad, attend education establishments…

‘We face a terrifying and sickening fact. We are allowing sex offenders to operate under a new name. Why should it be so simple for a convicted criminal to just wipe away their past? Other countries, such as Greece, require any convicted criminal to make a formal court application to change their name.’

He adds: ‘We cannot know how many convicted sex offenders are working in our schools, teaching our children, in our places of work.’

If this sounds dangerous, then perhaps we should turn our attention once more to Vanessa George, living we know not where.

While she was in prison, she reverted to her maiden name of Vanessa Sylvia Marks. The change came after a divorce from her husband Andrew, who has said he would ‘jump for joy’ if she killed herself. To formally return to your maiden name from your married title needs a deed poll alteration.

Since she was released, Marks (as we must now call her) has used a nickname of Hazel. But whatever this most monstrous individual is calling herself today, it is clearly not Vanessa George.

And that is a worry for every parent who would like to find out if she is living in their street.