Convicted child abuser who fled to the Philippines jailed for three years

Raymond Keeley
Convicted child abuser Raymond Keeley is now behind bars after he fled to the Philippines in breach of a court order

Convicted child abuser Raymond Keeley has been jailed for three years after slipping out of Britain to start a new life in the Philippines.

Raymond Keeley, aged 72, paid for a flight to Manila using a secret bank account when he should have been attending a Sex Offender Treatment Programme. He was convicted of abusing a six-year-old girl in 2012.

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Prosecutor Caroline Abraham told Bradford Crown Court: “He met a lady on Facebook from the Philippines and decided to start a new life. He did not think he needed to tell anyone.”

Keeley was tracked down by West Yorkshire Police and Interpol after he disappeared off the probation service’s radar in 2013.

He was arrested on a warrant and held at the Bureau of Immigation Bicutan detention centre for four months.

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He then used his own funds to book a flight to the UK to escape the notoriously overcrowded and filthy conditions, his barrister Jayne Beckett said.

As reported in the Telegraph & Argus, Keeley was jailed for two years in December 2012 for six offences of sexually assaulting the little girl during previous trips to the Philippines.

However, this sentence was reduced on appeal to a three-year community order with the condition that he attend the Sex Offender Treatment Programme.

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The alarm was raised when he missed several appointments with the probation service. It was then discovered he used a secret bank account to take a ferry to France. From there he caught a flight on to Manila.

He was apprehended in the Philippines, where he lived with his new wife and young son, in March.

He was flown back to the UK on July 21.

Raymond Keeley sent down

At crown court yesterday (Wednesday, September 13), he admitted breaching the community order by failing to tell police about the bank account and leaving the UK without permission.

Mrs Beckett said Keeley’s original two-year sentence was reduced to a community order because he had confessed his crimes to a priest.

“He informed against himself, otherwise the offences would probably never have come to light,” she said.

“He became a solitary and desolate figure and had very little in this country to live for.

“He made a very, very bad series of choices when he felt desolate and depressed,” Mrs Beckett said.

The judge, Recorder Tahir Khan QC, told Keeley: “These were gravely serious breaches. You made a conscious decision to leave the UK. It is at the top of the scale of seriousness for offences of this type.

“You showed flagrant disregard of the order to protect children from sexual offending.”

When passing sentence, he also imposed an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order.