On 28th June 1995 a man was released from prison in Kent, where he had served four years for the kidnapping of an eleven-year-old girl and the attempted kidnapping of a seventeen-year-old. A month later he moved to East-bourne. This was in the days before the Sex Offenders’ Register and he slipped quietly off the police radar.
In 1998, 14 miles along the coast in Hastings, two young girls were becoming firm friends. They liked clothes and sweets and computer games and the Spice Girls. After they had reached their tenth birthdays, their parents decided they were responsible enough to walk to school together every morning without adult supervision. After all, it was only a ten-minute walk.
The man didn’t have any friends, or a job. He lived alone in a dreary flat above a shopping centre. His only interest in life was pretty young girls…