The British paedophile who’s still on the run

In the current issue of the Spectator, I write about Warwick Spinks, a convicted British paedophile who hid in plain sight in Prague for some 15 years. In 1997, having already been released early from a 7-year (later reduced to 5-year) prison sentence delivered in 1995, Spinks violated the terms of his probation and fled the country. It was not long before he wound up in Prague, ‘the Bangkok of Europe’, where a series of British newspapers reported he was running sex tourism packages for gay men operating under the alias of ‘Willem’ and posing as a Dutch national. It was in this guise that I became acquainted with ‘Willem’, at least by reputation, as a ubiquitous and rather dodgy member of Prague’s closely-knit expatriate gay community.

Spinks was arrested by Czech police in August. Two months later, once he had been extradited to the UK, news of his arrest made headlines.