WEST Yorkshire has topped the sex offender league of shame.

A shock new report shows the county has the highest ratio of people on the Sex Offenders' Register per head of population in the country.

The findings by the National Probation Service reveal West Yorkshire has 49 people on the register for every 100,000 residents, with 1,045 registered offenders living in the county.

The statistics are revealed in the first annual reports from 16 of the 42 new public protection panels set up a year ago to monitor activities of convicted sex offenders.

Shocked

Today a Leeds father – whose daughter was a victim of convicted paedophile Dennis Newton – said: "Every parent should be alarmed by these figures.

"I am shocked at how many there are in the area and parents are not even given the right to know who they are or where they are living.

" It's simply not right and its dangerous for our children.

"It seems that anyone – your next door neighbour, your priest, even your school caretaker – can be a danger to our children."

The man's daughter was indecently assaulted by Newton when she was nine years old.

Newton was jailed for 12 months in June this year after admitting indecently assaulting the girl and a boy between 1992 and 1995. He was also placed on the sex offenders' register for 10 years.

Newton, formerly of Holmsley Field Lane, Woodlesford, invited the children to his home on separate occasions.

As well as sexually assaulting the children he made them remove their clothes and watch pornographic films.

The Public Protection Panels were set up in the wake of demands for a "Sarah's Law" to give communities the right to know the names of paedophiles in their area following the murder of seven-year-old Sarah Payne. Their panels are trying to monitor an estimated 47,000 offenders nationwide.

There is now speculation that leglisation may be introduced to oblige authorities to permit two members of the public to sit on the "paedophile panels".

The area with the next highest ratio of paedophiles per 100,000 population was the West Midlands with 44 and Lancashire with 43.

In Leeds an NSPCC spokeswoman today warned that the Sex Offenders' Register showed just a small part of the problem.

Unknown

She said: "We must also be aware that many are not on the register, either because they have not yet been caught or were convicted before the register in 1997.

"The NSPCC welcomes the introduction of panels, but it needs everyone working together – professionals, voluntary agencies, the Government and the public – to help to end child sex abuse.
 

"It is vital that parents know how to help protect their children from these offenders whose crimes are going undetected and whose whereabouts remain unknown."

Leeds Central MP Hilary Benn, Parliamentary Under Secretary for Community and Custodial Provision, said he could offer no explanation why West Yorkshire had highest ratio.

He said: "They are a reflection of the number of prosecutions and court convictions and have to be accepted in that light."

Mr Benn, who has written the foreword to the national Multi Agency Public Protection report, said the new multi-agency approach represented a significant step forward in the protection of the public.

He said: "Soon after taking up my new role I visited the members of the Public Protection Panel in the Leeds area.

"It was clear then that the level of cooperation between the police, probation service and other agencies had improved."

Monitored

Randel Barrows, Assistant Chief Officer for West Yorkshire Probation said: "What matters is not how many registered sex offenders there are, but that once they are brought to justice, their behaviour is closely monitored so that they are prevented from committing any more offences.

"West Yorkshire pioneered the approach to public protection which has now been introduced throughout the country as the Multi Agency Public Protection Approach."