The ‘predator’ sex offender was sentenced on July 3
A prolific sex offender from Cambridgeshire, who targeted children by disguising as a caretaker has been sent to prison. David Pearce, 70, from Cambridgeshire pleaded guilty to seven sex offences at Snaresbrook Crown Court on May 6.
In 1990, Pearce impersonated a caretaker and approached a group of four children at a lido in Barking, pretending to search for lost keys. He lured them into a changing area before forcing them to strip off and inappropriately touching them under the false pretence of finding the keys.
According to Metropolitan Police, the youngest was aged eight-years-old.
After the incident, the children ran to a nearby police station to report the crime. This enabled officers to gather statements and allowed forensic officers to implement a cordon and avoid contamination of the scene.
Forensic officers discovered semen on a wooden bench within the changing cubicle and extracted a DNA profile, but it unfortunately did not match to anyone on the database.
As part of their enquiries, specialist officers took one of the children to a local gym to try and identify the offender. However, there was no one present who matched the description of the suspect.
The case was filed pending further investigative opportunities coming to light after initial enquiries. In 2019, Pearce was arrested for a separate offence of voyeurism. The DNA he provided was a one in a billion match to the suspect at the lido.
Upon obtaining this evidence, detectives reviewed similar reports and found victim statements from a 1996 incident which followed an identical pattern of offending. Again, the 13-year-old victim said a man had forced her into shrubbery in a Barking park and assaulted her as he claimed to search for a pair of lost keys.
Not long after Pearce’s initial arrest in 2019, he was questioned in relation to the 1996 incident. The victim-survivor attended an identification parade, where she confirmed Pearce as the man who had assaulted her.
The concrete forensics and successful identification provided detectives with enough to charge him. He was sentenced to 18-years in prison on, Friday (July 3), at Snaresbrook Crown Court.
Detective Constable Tony Anionwu from the Met’s Specialist Crime Unit said: “Pearce was a predator who disguised himself as someone in a position of trust to exploit and assault young children. His actions had a lasting impact, and I would like to thank the victim-survivors for their unwavering resilience and profound patience while we strived for justice.
“Our dedicated team of officers have handled this case with sensitivity. As a force we remain committed to securing justice for anyone who has experienced a sexual assault, no matter when they occurred, and over the past five years we have more than tripled arrests and charges for this crime.”
On Wednesday, May 6, Pearce denied a further four counts of indecent assault, six counts of attempting an act of indecency with a child and two counts of indecency with a child relating to 12 other children – all in the 1990s.
The prosecution chose to leave those charges on file after his guilty pleas were entered.
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