Convicted child killer Ian Huntley is reportedly being allowed to mix with children during prison visiting hours.
Huntley is serving a minimum of 40 years behind bars for killing Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, who were both 10 years old at the time of the incident in 2002. He lured the girls into his house and murdered them, dumped their bodies in a ditch, and set them on fire.
Huntley is serving his sentence at HMP Frankland, in the British town of Durham, The Sun reported.
This undated handout photo shows Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman. Ian Huntley was found guilty of the murder of the two 10-year-old girls. (Cambridgeshire Constabulary via Getty Images)According to The Sun, out of concern for equality laws, prison officials have adjusted visitation policy, allowing Huntley to mix with children visiting relatives at the maximum security prison.
A Frankland official was cited by The Sun as saying, “We cannot discriminate against any prisoner, as we pride ourselves on treating all prisoners as equals.”
The move, which puts pedophiles in the same room as children, has been described as “ludicrous.”
A man who took his 5-year-old son to see a family member at the prison told The Sun: “As I sat down, there he was, right next to us.”
“I was furious. Who on earth thinks putting a pedophile serving a sentence for killing children into a room with young kids is a good idea?”
Tomorrow’s front page: ‘Soham child killer Ian Huntley has been allowed to mix with visiting kids behind bars’ https://t.co/8eio7NNtoP pic.twitter.com/HYw6tjGZTc
— The Sun (@TheSun) May 23, 2019
The Sun reported that under the new policy, convicted pedophiles are allowed to be in the same room with children for up to two hours at a time.
The decision is said to have been made locally by the jail and is not an official Prison Service policy, according to the report.
A service spokesman told the Sun that murderers and sex offenders being in the vicinity of children who come to visit convicts is “unavoidable” at a high-security jail such as the one housing Huntley and other child killers.
Prison officials stressed that visits are closely monitored.
The ‘Soham Murders’
Dubbed the “Soham Murders” for where the horrid crimes took place, the slaying of the two girls sparked one of Britain’s biggest manhunts, and the findings of the investigation shocked the public.
Investigators discovered Huntley had lured the girls to his house in Soham, Cambridgeshire, and brutally murdered them.
File photo showing two police officers walking past the sign welcoming visitors to the village of Soham, in Soham, England on Nov. 10, 2003. (Graeme Robertson/Getty Images)The bodies of the girls were found near an air base at Mildenhall in Suffolk, The Times reported.
Huntley’s girlfriend, Maxine Carr, who worked as a teaching assistant at the girls’ school, was also indirectly implicated in the crime. Carr provided Huntley with a false alibi and was convicted of perverting the course of justice. She was handed a sentence of three-and-a-half years behind bars.
The Times reported Carr was released in 2004 and was living under a new identity.
In an in-jail interview leaked to The Sun, Huntley reportedly expressed remorse for his crimes, saying, “I am sorry for what I have done, sorry for the pain I have caused to the families and friends of Holly and Jessica, for the pain I have caused my family and friends, and for the pain I have caused the community of Soham.”
This undated handout photo shows a pair scissors and a petrol container in the trunk of Ian Huntley’s car. (Cambridgeshire Constabulary via Getty Images)“I am genuinely, genuinely sorry and it breaks my heart when it is reported I have no remorse; that I relish something. I do not.”
Huntley confessed on the tape to deliberately killing Jessica to stop her from raising an alarm after Holly died, The Sun reported.
The convicted killer said: “I maintain that the first one was a genuine accident. OK, the second one I panicked and once she tried leaving the house I realized I could not leave the house.
“And whilst I said in court that I just acted instinctively, I knew I had to stop her leaving the house.”
Huntley said in the 2018 interview he had attempted suicide several times and he has had “a lot of health problems since and they have deteriorated over the years to the point now where I am really struggling.”
