Posted on 08/27/2002 8:39:08 AM PDT by JediGirl
By JOHN COLES
A MUM was treated like a criminal for raising the alarm about a freed paedophile.
Melanie Singer, 24, posted a leaflet to 250 homes after twisted Tony Adams was let out early from prison. But Adams complained of harassment and Melanie ended up being arrested.
She was fingerprinted, photographed and had DNA swabs taken. And she was later given a formal caution which will hang over her for five years.
Mum-of-two Melanie, an assistant at an infants school, said: The system stinks. People have every right to know if someone like this is living in their area.
But because this man made a complaint, the police were compelled to investigate and I was treated like the criminal. I cant help thinking that he had more rights than the rest of us.
Ex-youth club leader Adams, 48, was jailed for six years in 1998 for sick sex offences against two young boys.
One victim was a friend of Melanies and she was horrified to discover last year that Adams had been released on licence.
He had moved back to his home in Swindon, Wilts, but his victims were not officially told.
Melanie confronted him in public and later got him sacked from his job as a driver working with young men.
In her posters prompted by one of the victims trying to take a drugs overdose she wrote: Beware. Watch your children. Do you realise you have a convicted paedophile in your area?
Adams branded the warning vicious and formally complained to cops.
Ironically, as the Crown Prosecution Service was deciding what action to take against Melanie, police spotted that Adams was breaking the terms of his licence.
He was rearrested and put back behind bars to serve the last two years of his sentence.
Adams victim said: What Melanie did was right. She was acting in the public spirit.
A senior police source added: We had to investigate once this man made his complaint, but we wouldnt have liked to have seen the woman prosecuted.


Exposed ... dangerous Adams and the poster alert
This can't be - he was rehabilitated in those enlightened European prisons!
Does the view look anything like this?
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