Home Office officials boasted that police were able to run the car number plates of journalists to warn sex offenders about approaches from the press, documents show.
Home Office files released to the National Archives show the reaction to the campaign by the News of the World to create Sarah’s Law in the wake of the 2000 murder of Sarah Payne.
Under then-editor Rebekah Wade, now Brooks, the Sunday tabloid began a weekly ‘name and shame’ section, identifying dozens of sex offenders living in the community across the country.
It was fully backed by Sarah’s family, but backfired in some cases, causing civil unrest and attacks on victims of mistaken identity.
Although ministers were keen to meet with Brooks and the Payne family, and acknowledged the need for changes to the law and sex offender monitoring systems, the documents also suggest a worrying overreach of police powers.
In a “summary of recent events,” an unnamed official wrote: “The News of the World campaign made a number of fruitless attempts to approach offenders whose placements are funded by the DOU [Dangerous Offenders Unit].
“Their failure to do so was due to the ingenuity of staff at the Langley House Trust who traced press vehicles by running checks with the police and swiftly moved those [offenders] whom they considered to be in danger.”
It’s not known exactly which force carried out the checks, because the trust operates bail hostels across the country.
More than 400,000 people signed a petition to change the law so that the public would have the right to see a register of convicted paedophiles.
A version of the scheme was finally introduced in 2011.
Paedophile Roy Whiting was convicted of Sarah’s abduction and murder in December 2001 and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The documents also detail government deliberations about seeking an injunction to stop the newspaper’s campaign.
Government lawyers suggested that the claimants should include the Labour Home Secretary, Paul Boateng, and the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO), which did at one point allude to such a move.
But they acknowledged that an injunction would be “ground-breaking, complex and fiercely resisted by the press”.
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