Revealed: How jailed sex offenders signed up to dating websites

SEX offenders signed up dating websites while locked up in a secure hospital for mentally ill prisoners, a shocking investigation has found.

An undercover reporter from ITV’s Exposure programme discovered a paedophile patient was able to sign up to a sexually explicit dating website, and it appeared he used a photo of himself on the hospital grounds as his profile picture.

A double rapist, who met one of his victims online, accessed dating sites during walks in the grounds of Knees worth House Hospital in Cambridgeshire.

The rapist admitted visiting the websites on a phone, yet was allowed to keep the device.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC), which regulates secure hospitals, has launched an investigation into Knees worth, part of the Priory Group which was bought for £1billion by a Dutch private equity firm earlier this year.

The Priory charges taxpayers £185,000 a year to look after each of the mentally ill criminals housed at the former Edwardian stately home, which was rated ‘good’ by the CQC last year. Undercover journalist Carlo Lavarini began work as a mental health support worker at Knees worth earlier this year after just a fortnight of training and with no previous experience.

The programme reveals staff incompetence and female staff being leered at by sex offenders and other patients. One staff member was caught on camera saying: ‘They don’t encourage people to wash, nothing. What the f*** are we offering these guys? It’s actually a joke.’

Astonishingly, a child sex offender at the hospital gave £149 to a member of staff to buy a smart TV from a local supermarket which he was later suspected of using to search the web. Police found it had been used to look for ‘concerning images of children’ but no charges were brought because there was no proof images had been accessed.

The ward manager told the undercover reporter that the same patient had also ordered and destroyed 14 mobile phones in nine months, adding: ‘There’s something dodgy he is doing with his phones.’

Another child sex offender used the ward’s secure computer to download software which could enable his Play Station in his bedroom to be used to surf the internet.

A staff member told the reporter: ‘I did his room search and I saw all of his plans to make a chatroom for kids, everything. Why are they not doing anything?’

A security co-ordinator at the hospital added: ‘I don’t think the staff have got any bloody inkling about how dangerous this bloke is.’

A Priory representative said the allegations were misleading and that the well-being of its patients and staff was central to how the hospital was run.