Here are some of the most violent and most serious criminals in Sussex to have been locked up in August.
Paul Kerr
Simple Minds star Jim Kerr’s stalker brother tried to blackmail a superfan of the band out of £100,000 before he was jailed for harassing the man and his wife.
Paul Kerr, from Brighton, repeatedly branded NHS nurse John Fagan a child rapist on Facebook in an 11-month hate campaign that started when Mr Fagan posted an “innocent” negative online comment about the Scottish group’s new album.
He posted “pure and utter filth” about the couple in a “relentless” hate campaign, jurors were told.
Kerr was jailed in 2020 after a targeted campaign of harassment against the couple.
Now he has had his jail term extended for continuing his harassment from behind bars.
Kerr wrote to Mr Fagan, his employer and several organisations falsely accusing him of being a paedophile who abused his patients.
Kerr was locked up in January 2020 for six years, with an additional three years on licence, and given a restraining order.
But within days of being jailed he began to write letters to the NHS and Sussex Police repeating his accusations as he sought to have Mr Fagan sacked or arrested.
Kerr was jailed for a further four years after being found guilty at Lewes Crown Court on August 8 of stalking and harassment.
Matthew Taylor
Matthew Taylor has been sentenced to six and a half years in prison for the attack on a woman in her 20s on Hastings beach during the early hours of February 12.
The 31-year-old of Clement Hill Road, Hastings, was cleared of a second charge of raping the same woman.
Peter Harlow
Peter Harlow forced his way into homes across Hastings and stole valuable items including bank cards across a six-day spree.
Harlow, 36, of Kilnmead in Northgate, Crawley, later tried to use the bank cards on several occasions and tried to sell the jewellery he stole.
Harlow was found to have stolen bikes, bank cards and bank card readers as well as cash and jewellery.
He also took a camera, iPhone and iPad during his spree from April 20 to April 26 which took him across Hastings and St Leonards.
Harlow was sentenced to four and half years in prison at a sentencing hearing on August 8.
Gary Woolgar
Gary Woolgar was jailed for a string of historic sex offences against a young boy which left his victim “frightened and confused”.
Woolgar, 51, committed the offences on the child and preyed on him over the space of four years, including when he was under 13 years old.
The heating engineer from Lancing denied the sexual offences but was found guilty at trial.
He also admitted to being in possession of cocaine and cannabis.
Hanok Zeray
Predator Hanok Zeray chased lone women and girls through the streets of Brighton before sexually assaulting them.
Zeray, 32, of Ringmer Road in Brighton, was sentenced to 13 years in prison after pleading guilty to sexually assaulting six women last year.
Police said the city's streets were "a safer place" now he was behind bars.
Zeray was originally arrested on April 17 last year after a woman reported being raped in Old Steine the night before.
He was released under investigation and continued his spree of terrorising lone women and girls but was eventually arrested and charged six months later in October.
Fabio Paulo
Fabio Paulo kicked and punched a vulnerable woman in her home while demanding that she give him £500. He then called her family and sent them photos of the attack in an attempt to extort the money.
Paulo, 28, continued to attack the woman, who was known to him, and left her in hospital with 13 separate injuries following the violent assault in Eastbourne in March.
After pleading guilty to the offences, he was sentenced to 16 months in prison at a hearing at Lewes Crown Court and ordered to pay £187 in costs.
Paulo was also given a five-year restraining order against his victim.
Dean Brown
Dean Brown, 36, subjected his then-girlfriend, a woman in her 30s from Chichester, to constant aggressive outbursts and frequent assaults over the three years they were in a relationship.
She also endured emotional and physical abuse from July 2022 to early this year.
In one incident, he threatened her while she was pregnant with their child, saying “I’ll kick it out of you”. He also assaulted her while she held the baby shortly after it was born.
Two months later, Brown threw a knife at the woman, narrowly missing her and damaging a wall. The incident was one of a number in which he damaged their home.
Brown, of Hammer Hill in Surrey, pleaded guilty to two counts of causing actual bodily harm, three counts of criminal damage and two counts of assault at Worthing Magistrates’ Court in April.
At Portsmouth Crown Court on August 4, he was jailed for 16 months and given a ten-year restraining order.
Alfie Smith
Alfie Smith was part of the gang that took a telehandler from a construction site before ramming it through a cash machine.
After breaking into the store and attempting to steal the cash machine some of the group sped away in a stolen vehicle but Smith was chased on foot by police and arrested.
Smith, of Staines Road, Ashford, in Middlesex, was sentenced to six years in prison. He was also remanded to serve a further ten years of a sentence from 2019 as the offence was committed while on release from prison.
Mohamed Elshamy
Mohamed Elshamy took a woman from her Christmas party and sexually assaulted her on a beach.
The predator met the woman in The Crypt, Robertson Street, Hastings, in the early hours of Sunday, December 18, last year.
Within minutes, he was seen leading her out of the club and through an underpass to the seafront, where CCTV cameras captured him forcibly trying to kiss her and pulling at her clothing.
Footage then showed him further sexually assaulting the 24-year-old woman on the beach before walking away and leaving her alone and in distress.
Elshamy, 41, unemployed, of Carlisle Parade, Hastings, was identified through those CCTV images and arrested on suspicion of sexual assault.
He pleaded not guilty but was convicted following a trial at Lewes Crown Court.
At the same court on June 26, he was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment and was added to the Sex Offenders’ Register.
Sol Barrett
Sol Barrett raped a teenage girl after she had been assaulted.
He took the girl, who had been assaulted in a separate incident, back to his own home and raped her.
The victim, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, said she woke up at Barrett’s address the next morning and did not know who he was.
She sustained injuries from a separate assault the previous night on June 17, 2022, which were so serious that she had to attend hospital.
However, upon finding her, Barrett, 24, from Halley Close, Crawley, took her back to his address where he committed the rape.
Appearing in Lewes Crown Court on August 7, he pleaded guilty and was jailed for seven years and two months for rape and six months for three counts of engaging in penetrative sexual activity with a child.
The sentences are consecutive and will be on licence for a total of 14 years.
Barrett will also be a registered sex offender for life and was made the subject of a sexual harm prevention order for 15 years.
READ MORE: Sussex Police inspector in court over sex assault behind nightclub | The Argus
Max Kernot
Max Kernot isolated his partner from her loved ones and strangled her with a seatbelt during an abusive relationship.
Cleaner Kernot, 26, took control of his then-partner’s life and went as far as sleeping with her car keys under his pillow so she couldn’t escape.
After the end of their relationship, he harassed her and smashed her house and car windows. He also called her around seven times a day.
Kernot, of no fixed address, smashed all the windows on the ground floor of the woman’s house and was arrested after also damaging three cars.
Kernot, from Crawley, was jailed for 30 months at a sentencing hearing at Lewes Crown Court on July 27.
He was also given a seven-year restraining order against his ex-partner and her family.
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