A former Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) councillor has been disqualified from serving in local government for five years by a standards watchdog due to child sex offences. William Walker was convicted in June 2023 after admitting two charges of attempted sexual communication with a child. Posing online as a younger individual, he solicited pictures from two “children” in school uniforms, who were actually members of a paedophile hunter group. Walker, then a DUP councillor on Newry, Mourne and Down District Council, breached the councillors’ code of conduct, according to Northern Ireland’s local government standards commissioner Margaret Kelly. She found him unfit for public office, disqualifying him from holding the councillor position for five years, the maximum sanction available. In interviews with the watchdog, Walker acknowledged disappointing himself and his colleagues. Following his arrest in March 2022, Walker was suspended by the DUP, later resigning from the council and relocating to Blackpool. He received a sentence of 100 hours of community service and three years’ probation, along with a five-year sexual offences prevention order and registration on the sex offenders’ list.
By FCCT Editorial Team
, an independent military force, and allied militias in Sudan raped several dozen women and girls in West Darfur’s capital, El Geneina, and those fleeing to Chad between late April and late June 2023, Human Rights Watch said today. The assailants appear to have targeted people because of their Massalit ethnicity and, in some cases, because they were known activists.){kind=link}