Three Gillingham sex offenders jailed in a week for breaching court orders

Three sex offenders from Gillingham have been jailed in one week for breaching preventative court orders.

The men were subject to Sexual Harm Prevention Orders (SHPOs), which are enforced following a sexual offence conviction and place restrictions on offenders.

Officers became aware that Ben Horrobin, 40, was potentially in possession of a phone he had not made police aware of and attended his Fox Street home on Tuesday 5 May 2026.

Arresting him while the property was searched, Horrobin lunged towards an open window and threw a phone out of it. A review of this device uncovered around 5,000 indecent images of children, undeclared email addresses, and access to messaging sites and internet browsers in which usage history is deleted.

A bank card was also found which he had not notified police of.

He was later charged with multiple offences including making indecent images of children and breaching his SHPO. At Maidstone Crown Court on Friday 2 October, he was jailed for 2 years and 9 months.

Officers reviewing monitoring software on the phone of Ian Brown, 43, noticed he had been messaging several women over many applications. Concerned, his Paget Street home was attended on 8 September and a manual check of his phone revealed he had deleted messages, breaching the terms of his court order.

He was also found to be messaging a 12 year old girl.

Brown was charged with and admitted to multiple breaches of his SHPO and at Maidstone Crown Court on Monday 5 October he was sentenced to 1 year and 4 months in prison.

Monitoring software captured Lee Glendenning, 40, messaging with an adult woman and, due to him recently moving to Medway, officers decided to check in on him at his Franklin Road home on 21 July.

Searching through his phone, the chat with the woman that had been observed via the monitoring software had been deleted. By deleting the messages, he had breached his SHPO conditions.

Glendenning pleaded guilty to the breach and was jailed at Maidstone Crown Court on Wednesday 30 September for 1 year.

Detective Sergeant Karen Caulfield said:

‘These three court outcomes highlight the effectiveness of SHPOs in retaining control of sexual offenders even after they have served their custodial sentences. ‘Our officers have extensive powers to ensure the public is protected from individuals such as these and we are more than willing to use them. ‘We are satisfied these men, who have shown willing disregard of the conditions of their orders, are now facing the consequences of their actions.’