A woman has been jailed for three-and-a-half years for manslaughter, after stabbing a convicted paedophile to death.
Sarah Sands, 32, wept as she was sentenced at the Old Bailey on Tuesday. Sands was cleared of murdering her neighbour, 77-year-old Michael Pleasted, but found guilty of manslaughter by reason of loss of control, in July.
On the evening of 28 November last year, she armed herself with a knife and stabbed Pleasted eight times at his flat in Canning Town, east London.
Sands, a mother of five, acted within weeks of hearing that Pleasted had sexually abused three children.
Judge Nicholas Cooke QC said it was a “truly exceptional case” as he reduced her sentence from seven years, taking into consideration her position as a single mother.
Sands has already been in custody for the past 10 months and could be released on parole and reunited with her family in as little as 11 months’ time.
The judge stressed that Sands’s case was unique because she had lost control rather than taken the law into her own hands and engaged in “vigilante conduct”. He said: “There must never be the slightest encouragement for mob rule.”
Explaining his decision to lower the jail term, the judge went on: “This was a case in which the defendant promptly gave herself up to the police in a highly stressed state, never disputed responsibility for the killing as a matter of fact, did not take the opportunity to get rid of evidence and demonstrated remorse.”
After the “determined and sustained attack”, Pleasted crawled from his living room and collapsed in the hallway, where he bled to death.
Within hours, Sands handed herself in to police, telling an officer: “Who houses a fucking paedophile on an estate, like, seriously? He was, like, asking for trouble.”
She explained she had thought Pleasted was just a nice old man, adding: “He’s fucking harmless now, ain’t he?”
At the time, Pleasted was on bail awaiting trial at Snaresbrook crown court on two charges of sexual assault on two children under 13. Police were investigating a further allegation that he had abused a third boy.
The Old Bailey heard that Pleasted had a string of convictions for sexually assaulting boys between 1970 and 1991. Pleasted, who also went by the name of Robin Moult, had 24 previous convictions for sexual offences before he met the children he was accused of molesting last year.
He served sentences of between nine months and six years for sex crimes that included indecent assault on a male over 16, indecent assault on a male under 16, indecent assault on a male under 14 and buggery.
But before the fresh allegations emerged, Pleasted had become a well-known community figure running a bric-a-brac stall from a local shop, the court heard.
Sands had befriended him and used to bring home-cooked meals to his flat.
During the trial earlier this year, Sands sobbed in the witness box as she insisted she had not meant to hurt Pleasted when she went to his flat on the night of the killing after drinking a bottle of brandy.
She told jurors she had gone there to plead with him to admit his crimes and spare his young accusers from having to go to court. But when Pleasted answered the door, he ignored her request and just “smirked” as he told her the boys were all liars who had ruined his life.
Sands said: “I was frightened. It was not how it was meant to go. He was meant to listen to me.”
The jury of 10 women and two men deliberated for three days before clearing her of murder and convicting her of manslaughter..