Wigan court round-up

Round-up of people brought before local magistrates ...
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A Wigan 16-year-old has been found guilty of the sexual assault and attempted rape of a younger boy. The defendant, who cannot be identified for legal reasons was, however, cleared of three other charges of rape and attempted rape - all of a boy under the age of 13. The teenager had denied all the accusations against him but was found guilty of two of them following a trial at Wigan Youth Court. He is sentenced on December 18.

A Wigan woman was caught by speed cameras on the same stretch of motorway SIX TIMES in a matter of weeks. In episodes resembling the film Groundhog Day, Hayley McDonald’s Vauxhall Antara was repeatedly flashed for breaking the 50mph limit between junctions 12 and 11 of the westbound carriageway of the M62. Wigan and Leigh magistrates were told that each time the average speed cameras clocked her for travelling at between 57 and 59mph on lanes which were undergoing smart motorway work. The first was on July 18 last year, followed by September 26, October 3, October 17, October 20 and November 11. Each time it was the same vehicle, heading in the same direction, on the same carriageway and always breaking the limit by almost the same margin. McDonald, 35, of Wennington Road, Highfield, was further charged with three times failing to notify the police of who was at the wheel of the vehicle each time it broke the speed limit. Because of this it was assumed that she was the motorist and the matters were all proved against her. McDonald is scheduled to be sentenced at the Wigan court on November 17.

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A Wigan man has been accused of sexually abusing girls as young as four and having a vast collection of child porn. Ian Story, 54, faced no fewer than 17 charges when he appeared before Wigan and Leigh magistrates. They include the making of 24,165 indecent images of children, 904 of which fall into highest category of seriousness (A). Of the remainder 1,466 are deemed category B and 21,795 category C. He is also charged with distributing dozens of these images - 27 of them category A, 20 B and 44. And the charge sheet also includes the sexual touching of a named minor and the making of indecent images with this girl (one category A, three category C) between 2010 and 2012. There are further charges involving two counts of sexually touching a girl of four between 2019 and 2020, and another two of sexually touching a girl aged between eight and 10 between 2018 and 2020. Already in custody at HMP Forest Bank, Story was remanded to make his first appearance on the charges before a Bolton Crown Court judge on November 27.

Wigan and Leigh Magistrates CourtWigan and Leigh Magistrates Court
Wigan and Leigh Magistrates Court

A man has denied repeatedly attacking his Wigan ex. Channing Tornerup, 39, of Llys-eithin, Mold, appeared before Wigan magistrates to plead not guilty to four counts of assaulting Sharon Scully by beating over a three-day period last December and to smashing her £100 mobile phone. He was remanded on conditional bail until the next hearing on November 25.

A young man has walked free from court after a double assault case against him collapsed. Shane Liptrot, 21, of Anson Place, Marsh Green, had denied assaulting Kerry Malloy and Sophie Jones by beating on June 9 this year. And when the prosection offered no evidence at Wigan and Leigh Magistrates’ Court this month, the bench dismissed the cases and told the defendant he was a free man.

Anthony Ward, 45, of Kendal Road, Ince, has been bound over to the sum of £100 for 12 months after admitting a breach of the peace on November 9 when he appeared before Wigan justices.

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A judge will decide the fate of a man who admits driving dangerously on a Wigan housing estate. Ryan Charlton appeared before borough magistrates to plead guilty not only to dangerous driving on Broom Road, Norley, but also being at the wheel of a Vauxhall Astra that day - May 16 - so without insurance or a licence. The 35-year-old was released on bail conditional that he reside at his home in Albert Street, Newtown, until he is sentenced at Bolton Crown Court on December 7.

A teenager who admitted to have four different banned drugs for peddling in Wigan has been given a suspended jail sentence. Thomas Kay, 19, of Woolton Close, Ashton, had been sent by Wigan justices to appear before a Bolton judge accused of possessing ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and skunk cannabis with intent to supply. Pleading guilty to all four charges at an earlier hearing, he returned to the crown court to be told he was being sentenced to 24 months in prison for each of the offences. The sentences run concurrently and they are suspended for 18 months.

A Wigan man who admitted threatening to murder a woman then repeatedly contacting her after a court had banned him from doing so has been sentenced. Daniel Kelly, 29, of Atherton Road, Hindley, had previously appeared before Wigan justices to change his plea to guilty to a charge of threatening to kill Lauren Roberts. He had further denied four times ignoring a Manchester magistrates order not to contact Ms Roberts and also aiming threatening and abusive language at a PC Ball. But at a later hearing he changed those pleas to guilty too. Kelly maintained he had not threatened to kill Alan Roberts and this was accepted by the prosection when Kelly admitted to a lesser charge of threatening. At Bolton Crown Court he was sentenced to 16 months in prison but it was suspended for 24 months. A restraining order prevents him from contacting Lauren and Alan Roberts for two years and a named minor can only be contacted through a third party or social services.

A 12-month driving ban has been imposed on a 25-year-old who was caught at the wheel while under the influence of drugs. Corey Jones, 25, of Lockside Mews, Ince, appeared before Wigan and Leigh magistrates to having taken both cocaine and cannabis before driving a Volkswagen Golf on April 21. The hearing was told that the car was pulled over by police in Brookhouse Street, Jones was tested for drugs and the results came back to show that illegal quantities of both the class A and B substances were in his system. As well as the disqualification, the bench also ordered him to pay fines and court costs totalling £470.

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A man who drunkenly threatened a woman with a knife has been spared an immediate jail term. Stuart Gibson, 46, of Orchard Street, Wigan, appeared before borough magistrates to admit to menacing Michaela Wilkinson with a blade on July 9. He was given a 12-week prison sentence but it was suspended for 12 months. Gibson must also attend an alcohol rehabilitation programme, complete 20 days of rehabilitation activities and pay a victim services surcharge and court costs totalling £207.

A man has admitted to having an offensive weapon - namely a lock knife - in public. Clive Bromley, 46, of Toogood Lane, Wrightington, appeared before Wigan justices to plead guilty to having the illegal blade in Wigan’s parish church gardens on November 7. He was released on bail, conditional that he lives at his home address and observes a 7pm to 7am curfew while being electronically tagged until he goes before a Bolton Crown Court judge for sentencing on December 7.

A Wigan man’s lengthy legal bid to overturn a council decision banning him from the private hire vehicle industry has failed. Hossein Ghorbani, from Aspull, took the local authority to Bolton Crown Court to appeal to a judge against the town hall revoking his private hire trade licence. However, the appeal was dismissed which means the revocation of his licence still stands. Ghorbani, of St David’s Crescent, has waged a legal battle in opposition to Wigan Council’s move against him for more than a year but his efforts now look to be finally in vain. He now faces a hefty legal bill, with Bolton Crown Court ordering the 43-year-old to pay the council £3,734 in costs. It is not the first time the two parties have been in front of the courts. Ghorbani appealed the decision by the council to revoke his licence to Wigan and Leigh Magistrates’ Court in July 2019.

However, after a two-day hearing there the bench also upheld the town hall’s original decision. At that point Ghorbani announced his intention to take the matter before a crown court judge and also issued a blistering attack against Wigan Council, claiming it was singling him out for unfair and disproportionate treatment. His crown court appeal, though, was dismissed on October 23, with the judge coming to the same conclusion on the case as the magistrates’ court bench and the town hall had done previously. Speaking after the judge issued the decision on the appeal Coun Paul Prescott, Wigan Council’s cabinet member for environmental services, said, “We are pleased that the committee’s decision was upheld as we are committed to ensuring that all our licensed drivers display high standards of conduct at all times.”

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Legal attempts to seize back the ill-gotten gains of a Wigan drugs gang have been put back further because of the Covid-19 outbreak. Paul Witter, 41, of Trinity Gardens, Ashton, Marc Talbot, 47, of Kilburn Avenue, Ashton, Richard McDonough, 52, of Croft Close, Birkenhead, and 53-year-old Joseph Manley, of Landseer Road, Everton, were given jail sentences totalling more than 40 years after being convicted last year of conspiring to supply class A substances. Their jailings followed a seven-month covert operation which included staking out an industrial unit in Marus Bridge, from which police made the UK’s biggest haul of heroin adulterant. But a Proceeds of Crime hearing, already adjourned several times, has now been postponed indefinitely due to the court system backlog. This month the quartet was due to return from their cells to Bolton Crown Court for a Proceeds of Crime hearing at which the size of their criminal proceeds would be estimated and how much could be recovered through seizing their assets. But due to the pandemic it was ordered that the case be adjourned until August 7.

Their trial was told that Challenger’s Operation Tricket recovered more than a third of a metric tonne of heroin adulterant at the Marus Bridge unit and another 115kg at a factory in Merseyside. The authorities’ attention was first drawn to the gang when police were called by Wigan fire crews to a blaze at a unit off Worthington Way. Vast amounts of paracetamol, caffeine and small bottles of food colouring were found in the unit - known to be used in the underworld and added to heroin. Large white bags of powder were also seized in the search.

A perverted Wigan youth worker has been jailed after young girls he contacted online with vile sexual requests proved to be undercover police.

Former town hall colleagues of the now sacked Matthew Bennett, who worked with some of the borough’s most vulnerable youngsters, told of their shock at discovering his sordid secrets. The 26-year-old, of Park Road, Wigan, was given a seven-year jail sentence after pleading guilty to 11 sexual offence charges. They included sending lewd pictures of himself to girls under 16, supposedly persuading a girl of 12 to send an indecent picture of herself to him and inciting the mother of a seven-year-old to perform a sex act on him and allow her to be sexually assaulted by him. But the woman and girls with whom Bennett was communicating were in fact vice squad officers. Bennett further admitted to distributing indecent images of children which fall into the lowest, category C, of seriousness. A Bolton Crown Court hearing was told that Bennett didn’t back off from a first brush with the law. He communicated with two undercover officers on the KIK messenger app thinking they were young girls and was arrested on March 3 then bailed. But on July 20 he communicated with an undercover officer on XHamster.com whom he thought was the mother of a young girl and tried to talk her into agreeing to involve the child in illegal sexual activities. He deleted information from his phone immediately prior to his arrests. But he used his own surname in his username and sent photographs that displayed his face. One former workmate said, “My background is in counselling and am quite switched on about spotting character traits but I was caught completely by surprise about Bennett.

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“He just seemed an ordinary guy who kept himself to himself. He was working for the council’s ‘targeted youth services’ which put him in contact at schools, groups and homes with some of the borough’s most vulnerable children, which is of course a worry, although we understand that the offences had nothing to do with his job. Ten months ago he went off on long-term sick and that was the first we knew of anything being wrong.” Another said, “To say we were shocked and repulsed after seeing that he had pleaded guilty to those sex crimes is an understatement.”

A Wigan Council spokesperson said, “We can confirm that Matthew Bennett was dismissed from Wigan Council as soon as these allegations came to light. Neither the allegations or convictions relate to his employment at the Council.” As well as his prison sentence, Bennett will then be on extended licence for five years, will be the subject of an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order and will also sign on the Sex Offenders’ Register indefinitely.

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