October 2013: Now living in Southport October 2005 Paedophile tracked down by father A paedophile who fled the UK when he was released from prison on licence was caught after the victim’s father hired a private detective to track him down. Bernard Scullion, of Wallasey, Wirral, was jailed for two years in January 2004 for assaulting a 13-year-old girl. He served five months but when he was released on licence he fled to Pattaya, in Thailand. The girl’s father, who cannot be named for legal reasons, spent thousands of pounds tracking the 54-year-old down. “The money and effort I spent in finding Scullion has been worthwhile if my child grows up knowing that I did something about it,” he said. “He shouldn’t have left the country and I was prepared to go to the absolute limit to get him back here. “I was determined that he was not going to get away,” he told the Liverpool Echo newspaper. Scullion, who was also convicted of having child pornography on his computer, had been employed by the girl’s family as a chauffeur. His two-year sentence was halved by the Court of Appeal in May 2004. Scullion is now serving a four-month sentence after admitting breaching his licence.  Postcards told of ‘one hell of a journey’ BERNARD Scullion took off for the Far East saying he “felt like getting off, out of the country” magistrates heard. The 53-year-old was jailed for quitting Britain and breaching the terms of his licence by the Birkenhead court. Magistrates were told Scullion knew he was banned from travelling when he was released from prison unless under approved exceptional circumstances. He claimed he had gone abroad after receiving death threats. In August 2004 his probation officer received a hand-written letter from him saying he was travelling to the Gulf of Mexico to work and would send postcards as he went. In September 2004, the officer received a postcard from Penang in Malaysia. Mr Scullion, who lived in Wallasey with his elderly mother, continued to send postcards to the probation officer, signing them “from Bernie”. In one, he said he was having “one hell of a journey so far”. Prosecutor Mandy Napal said: “Inquiries revealed he had not gone out to work but that he had gone to Thailand to retire. “In his final postcard he said he was going to Australia.” Scullion was eventually arrested by Thai police on September 16 2005 and detained in Bangkok after it was discovered he had broken the conditions of the sex offenders register. After a month in a Bangkok detention centre awaiting deportation, Scullion decided to pay for his own plane ticket home and was arrested at Heathrow. Mitigating, Quentin Neil said: “Mr Scullion had received death threats following his conviction for sex offences. These stopped when he went into custody but started again when he was released. “He didn’t have confidence the police could deal with it and took the decision to escape.” Scullion pleaded guilty to breaching the terms of his licence and thanked magistrates for their time and trouble after they sentenced him to four months to run concurrently. He will remain in custody until February 2007. My girl was a total mess BERNARD Scullion was employed by the family as a driver to pick the children up from school when they were teenagers. But after years of occupying that position of trust, his catalogue of abuse was unmasked. The father believes that Scullion preyed upon his 13-year-old daughter over a six-month period and set about grooming her. He claims that Scullion showed her prostitutes working the streets of Birken-head and described to her his own sexual encounters with women. He says that his daughter was shown indecent images on his computer and that Scullion plied her with vodka. The father said: “He would see my children at least a dozen times every week, and took her to McDonald’s and on other trips. “They would sometimes go bowling together, but we never could have imagined the real extent of his intentions. “He sent us a letter after he wrongly assumed that my daughter had told us what had been happening. “We showed her the letter and she broke down in tears. “My child became a total mess because of what he did. “She’s getting back to normal now, but she’s still angry with the world and has bad dreams. “Scullion will have to live the rest of his life knowing that I am on his trail.”