JAMES BURNS CONVICTED SEX OFFENDER EMPLOYED AT MANCHESTER AIRPORT DESPITE ALLEGATIONS

In May 2014, James Burns, a 56-year-old convicted sex offender, was found working as an aviation security officer at Manchester Airport, where he was responsible for frisking passengers. Despite passing criminal record and counter-terrorism checks, his past convictions for historic sex offences were not revealed because the Police National Computer at that time did not include all offences from the 1970s and 1980s.

Burns was also under police investigation for new allegations involving abuse of a 16-year-old boy when he was offered the job in 2013. He did not disclose the allegations to his employers until after he was convicted at Manchester Crown Court in March 2014, which brought his criminal history to light.

Residing on Church Street, Westhoughton, Bolton, Burns was suspended on full pay but retained his position despite receiving a nine-month prison sentence suspended for two years, a 12-month supervision order, a sexual offences prevention order restricting his interactions with minors, and a ten-year registration on the sex offenders register.

He was convicted of four counts of sexual assault against the 16-year-old victim. The sexual offences prevention order prohibits Burns from unsupervised contact with children under 16 and from attempting to befriend males under that age.

Between August and December 2007, Burns assaulted the teenager, falsely claiming he was gay, although Burns was married with children. During this period, he sent the victim up to 40 sexually explicit and suggestive texts each night, threatened that no one would believe him if he reported the abuse, and showered him with gifts and cash.

At the time, Burns operated his own courier business, which closed in 2010. He later secured employment at Manchester Airport in 2013. The victim only came forward in 2012 after seeking medical attention.

Additional revelations during the trial disclosed Burns’s earlier convictions: an indecent assault on a teenage boy in 1980 when he pretended to be a police officer, and two convictions in 1983 and 1984 for public order offences involving propositioning young men in Bolton’s Shifnal Street area.

As part of his airport role, Burns engaged in physical searches of passengers passing through security. A Manchester Airport spokesperson stated: “All security officers are given a criminal records check and a counter terrorism check, before they can be based at a UK airport, and the checks highlighted no disqualifying offences. Had the check shown up the offences from the 1980s Burns would have been disqualified from working at the airport.”

The spokesperson reaffirmed that Burns remains suspended on full pay. It was also noted that the Police National Computer database is continually updated, and at the time of his 2012 arrest, Burns’s previous offences had not yet been added.