August 2023 Coleraine sex offender to be sentenced for breaching terms of SOPO A Coleraine sex offender today admitted breaching a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) six months after it was imposed. Although Harold Burke did not appear before Coleraine Magistrates, sitting in Ballymena, his lawyer told the court that the 63-year-old was admitting possessing and using two mobile phones without declaring them to his designated Risk Manager or the PSNI within the vicinity of his home in the Quilly Road, Coleraine, on September 28, 2020. The court heard how registered sex offender Burke had been given an indefinite SOPO before police became aware of the phones during a visit by his Risk Manager. During interview, Burke admitted using the phones “to text people” and said he was aware of the terms of the SOPO which he apologised for breaching. Following a defence application for a pre-sentence Probation report, District Judge Peter King adjourned sentencing until Friday, September 22, ordering that Burke attends for sentencing. In March 2020, Burke agreed to a three-year probation order after he was snared by an online paedophile hunter group. In that case Burke admitted three counts of attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity on dates between June 25 and July 22, 2018, and the court heard then how the conversations with the decoys, who were posing as 13 and 14-year-old girls, followed the same basic modus operandi where Burke gave them instructions on how to masturbate. Using the name “Hal” and with his own photograph attached to his profile, prosecuting counsel Mark Farrell said Burke “instigated conversations with who he believed to be underage girls called Zoe, Fiona and Angel,” adding that “in essence the conversations became extremely sexualised and extremely explicit.” In July 2018, the paedophile hunters from Decoy Central handed transcripts of the chats to the PSNI who arrested Burke and questioned him but throughout police interviews, “he largely made no comment.” Last February however, that probation order was revoked and replaced with a 12-month sentence of which Burke was ordered to serve six months behind bars and six months on supervised licence conditions. He was clearly warned at the time that any breach or non-compliance would see him jailed and the court heard how Burke had missed or turned up late for appointments and had failed to fully participate in programs of work designed to address his deviant attitudes and the risk his poses. Along with the probation order, Burke was also made the subject of a lifelong Sexual Offences Prevention Order but he has repeatedly breached that order as well. Earlier this year, Burke was given a four-month sentence suspended for two years after he admitted breaching his SOPO by having a laptop “without the prior approval of his designated risk manager” in September 2021. The unauthorised computer was discovered during a routine home visit when Burke disclosed he had bought the laptop and used it to access the Internet but thankfully, it “contained nothing of concern” and during police interviews, Burke confirmed he had bought the laptop and not provided police with the required details.   March 2020 Coleraine man ‘snared’ by paedophile hunters given three years probation A pervert who thought he was having sexually explicit chats with three young teenagers but was communicating with members of a so-called paedophile hunters group walked free from court after he was ordered to complete a three year probation order. Harold Samuel Burke (60) appeared at Antrim Crown Court. Judge Donna McColgan QC warned him however that if there is “any breach whatsoever, and I mean any breach, you will be brought back before me and you will be sentenced to a custodial sentence.” As well as the probation order, the judge also imposed a lifelong Sexual Offences Prevention Order. The case against Burke is a legal first in the Northern Ireland justice system as it is the first time that a case investigated by paedophile hunters has been dealt with in the Crown Court. At an earlier hearing Burke, from the Quilly Road in Coleraine, entered guilty pleas to three counts if attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity on dates between June 25 and July 22 2018. Opening the case prosecuting counsel Mark Farrell told the court how three paedophile hunters from a group calling themselves Decoys Central and using the monikers Fiona, Zoe and Angel, created fake online profiles where they pretended to be 13 and 14-year-old girls. Calling himself “Hal,” Burke “instigated conversations with who he believed were under-age girls “ said the lawyer adding that when the group reported the offences to the PSNI, they produced transcripts of “sexually explicit conversations with the decoys.” Describing the online chats as “extremely sexualised and extremely explicit,” Mr Farrell recounted how the conversations followed a basic modus operandi where Burke told the ‘girls’ they would have a “fantastic experience” before directing them to undress on how to perform sex acts on themselves. In relation to conversations with ‘Zoe,’ the court heard that Burke was “asking to meet her for sex” and Mr Farrell submitted that a feature of the explicit chats was “an element of a degree of recruitment where the defendant asks the decoy, or underage girl, to try to recruit others to create, I suppose, a network.” There was also, he further submitted, a “certain amount of pre-planning” as well as grooming by Burke who has a previous conviction for having indecent images of children. Mr Farrell told the court given the nature of the investigations, “it’s a rather unusual case” but that the features of grooming, “recruitment” and Burke’s previous conviction aggravated the case. The guilty pleas however were a mitigating factor, conceded the lawyer adding that while there was no victim as such, “it’s a serious matter.” Judge McColgan, who told the court it was the first so-called paedophile hunter case to reach the Crown Court, said while the offences did “cross the custody threshold….he was mindful of the fact that he had served seven months in custody on remand. “On the basis that he is prepared to engage with probation, I will give him a probation order for the maximum period I can pass which is three years,” said the judge.