Caution for `sex crime' judge

A JUDGE has been cautioned by police after he was allegedly caught committing an act of gross indecency with another man in public toilets near a court where he sits.

Judge Richard Hoffman, a district judge and registrar, was detained last Friday at Wrexham bus station.

A report on the incident will now be sent to the Lord Chancellor's Department. An LCD spokesman said: "The Lord Chancellor would expect to receive a report on any circumstances involving complaints of misbehaviour of any sort by a judge and would consider disciplinary action."

A spokesman for North Wales Police said two men were arrested on Friday 20 August in the public toilets in Wrexham and subsequently cautioned for gross indecency.

Judge Hoffman was appointed in 1986 as joint registrar for the districts of Bangor, Caernarvon, Conwy, Colwyn, Llangefni, Porthmadog and Rhyl county courts and joint district registrar of the district registry of the High Court at Bangor, Caernarvon and Rhyl.

His most famous case was when he ordered the public disclosure of the secret Jillings report on sexual abuse in the Clwyd area. This was one of the factors that led to the setting up of Britain's biggest child abuse inquiry, in north Wales, by the then secretary of state for Wales, William Hague.

The report detailed allegations of physical and sexual abuse by members of staff and others against up to 200 children in the former Clwyd county over a 20-year period.

Judge Hoffman, sitting at Wrexham County Court in May 1996, ordered that a solicitor representing one of the youngsters allegedly abused in local authority care could see extracts of the report.

t A youth court magistrate was yesterday ordered to join the paedophile register for five years after a criminal exposed him as an Internet child pornographer.

David Smith, 45, who regularly passed sentence on young offenders, was arrested in October last year after a tip-off from his ex-lover, now a convicted burglar, to the Obscene Publications Squad. Officers confiscated Smith's personal computer at his home in Rochdale, Greater Manchester.

Smith, a former area control manager for Greater Manchester Ambulance Service, was placed on probation for 12 months by Tameside magistrates after admitting six charges of manufacturing and possessing indecent photographs. He was told to sign the Sex Offenders Register and to pay pounds 350 prosecution costs.