‘Predatory’ former police officer from Burgess Hill jailed for sexual activity with a boy

A Burgess Hill man has been jailed for possessing indecent images of children and sexual activity with a boy.
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Phillip Patterson, 34, unemployed, of Alexandra Road, Burgess Hill, has already served a prison sentence for possessing more than 50,000 indecent images of children, according to police.

But he has now been given a six-year sentence for similar offences and for sexual activity with a teenage boy, after his ‘repeated and predatory flouting of the law’ was uncovered by a Sussex Police investigation, a police spokesman said.

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Patterson was sentenced to a total of six years at Hove Crown Court on Thursday (19 December) after pleading guilty in October to three offences of possession of indecent images of children, and three offences of sexual activity with a teenaged boy.

Phillip Patterson. Photo courtesy of Sussex PolicePhillip Patterson. Photo courtesy of Sussex Police
Phillip Patterson. Photo courtesy of Sussex Police

The spokesman added: “An offence of breach of his Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) was not proceeded with and was allowed to lay on the court file.

“He will be a registered sex offender for life and the SHPO has also been continued, to run indefinitely.”

The prosecution, authorised by the CPS, followed an investigation by the Paedophile Online Investigation Team (POLIT) of Sussex Police, working with colleagues in the West Sussex sex offender monitoring team, according to police.

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Detective Constable Vicky Jones said: “In September 2011 Phillip Patterson, using his birth name of Philip Savidge, then a serving police officer, admitted 42 offences of making and distribution of 54,323 indecent images of children, including the possession of 1,681 prohibited and extreme images.

“He was sentenced to 27 months imprisonment and the court also gave him a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO), severely restricting his access to children, computers and related digital equipment.

“However, during a routine visit in 2018 to Patterson as part of their role to monitor registered sex offenders in the community, colleagues found on his mobile phone references to indecent material about children.”

When it was subjected to expert forensic examination officers found more than 100 indecent images of young boys, taken from the internet and including more than 40 of the most serious category, she added.

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DC Jones said: “The phone also contained evidence of his online grooming and sexual relationship with a boy, a relationship which the boy confirmed when we traced him.”

He had already been given an eight-week suspended sentence in October 2016 for a previous breach of his sex offender notification requirements, and in September 2018 was given a 17-week custodial sentence for the further breach of the registration requirement which came to light in the police visit earlier that year.

In sentencing Patterson, judge David Rennie said; “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.

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“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.”

DC Jones added: “It became clear from our investigations that Patterson has remained a determined sex offender, with a predatory interest in young boys.”