Belinda McKenzie & Andy Peacher work to free their favourite paedophile

You have to hand it to Andy Peacher: he is nothing if not doggedly determined. Whatever one might say about his intellectual gifts or his grasp on reality, he isn’t a quitter—take, for example, his unshakeable loyalty to convicted, and now extradited, paedophile Peter Hofschröer.

Readers might recall that Mr Hofschröer, who was convicted at Teesside Crown Court in 2016 of possession of tens of thousands of child sexual abuse images, was extradited to his native Austria in July 2017, having gone AWOL from Belinda McKenzie’s Highgate home earlier that month. Both Belinda and Andy posted this on Facebook, but hastily back-tracked when this blog pointed out that a small child had been sexually assaulted in a playground a couple of hundred yards from where Mr Hofschröer had made his getaway.

More recently, Andy has been campaigning to raise funds on Mr Hofschröer’s behalf, apparently so that he can afford legal representation in Austria, in order to challenge his current incarceration in a psychiatric hospital.

Andy is now using the fundraising site “Leetchi”, as apparently his GoFundMe page was removed for reasons unknown to us. 

Lest you think, “Gosh, that looks like an elderly woman, not a portly middle-aged Austrian paedophile”, don’t worry, you’re not going blind.

Those who support Mr Hofschröer find it more palatable to do so if they can convince themselves that they are, instead, supporting his elderly mother, Barbara. To cement this cynical marketing ploy in the minds of would-be donors, supporters of the Austrian paedophile refer to this lady as “Grandma B”.

“Grandma”…such a homey, wholesome, sympathy-inducing word. Not at all like “notorious paedophile with enormous collection of child sex abuse images”.

To carry on the fiction that all monies will go toward “stopping the abuse of Grandma B” (and DEFINITELY not toward unleashing an unrepentant paedophile upon the community) Andy has posted this carefully worded screed*:

*Unlikely to have been written by Andy; this sounds to us very much like a Belinda production.

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Note the complete absence of any inconvenient words like “paedophile”, “danger to children”, or “child sexual abuse images”.

Granted, they do mention that Mr Hofschröer was “fitted up with ludicrous and ever-changing accusations of possessing child pornography, the details of which accusations have never been forthcoming”.

In point of fact, those details have indeed been forthcoming in court. Let us refresh Andy and Belinda’s memory with this excerpt from the York Press, which reported on Mr Hofschröer’s trial:

A historian accused of downloading tens of thousands of sexual images of children has claimed he is a man of integrity.

Peter Anthony Hofschroer, 60, who specialises in the Napoleonic Wars, denied that he had used a Prussian regiment name for an account on a website of indecent images, carried out internet searches for illegal images or downloaded a story about children having sex with each other.

He claimed he was the victim of a conspiracy between a fellow military historian who won defamatory damages in a court case against him, the judge in that case and a Duke; and that he had evidence of senior people linked to North Yorkshire Police engaging in al fresco sex with Jimmy Savile on the North York Moors. …

Hofschroer, of no fixed address and formerly of Rosedale Avenue, Acomb, denies 16 charges of downloading sexual images of children.

The charges relate to more than 36,000 pictures and videos found on computers in his former office in Acomb, on his laptop and in a computer tower found in a car he rented.  The trial continues.

In evidence, he denied causing a family rift when he moved to York in 2008. 

The jury have heard technical evidence that the images were downloaded from 1997 to 2014 and that when he was arrested, he accused the interviewing officers of being sex offenders. …

In cross-examination, Mr Hampton alleged that whenever anyone challenged Hofschroer he got very angry with them. 

“When anyone spends years persecuting me, I lose my temper,” he replied.

The barrister said: “You make people’s lives hell.”

“Oh, really, what have these people done to my mother and I – nine years of persecution,” he replied. 

“To distract from what you are really up to,” said Mr Hampton. 

Hofschroer laughed: “What I am really up to?”

Mr Hampton said: “Looking at images of little boys.”

Earlier, he had denied that when he was arrested at York Magistrates Court, he tried to stop police taking a laptop he had with him, knowing it had more than 20,000 indecent images of children on it.

“I would have been insane walking into that situation anticipating being arrested with incriminating evidence on my laptop”, he claimed, adding the laptop contained evidence of police corruption he didn’t want officers to see. 

He had been about to prosecute three of his relatives and claims the images were planted on the computer later. …

He claimed at Teesside Crown Court that he had been living in Austria with his mother in December 2012 when police seized computers from the Acomb house where he and his parent had been living until late 2009. The jury have heard that computer experts found nearly 7,000 illegal sexual images of children on them.

“I am not sure the computers the police seized were actually mine,” he claimed. 

He alleged his brother Robert falsely told police that the computer towers he had left at the house had been stolen in a 2011 burglary, and that family members had taken his possessions from the house without his permission. 

In July 2011, he had arranged for bailiffs to make an inventory of items in the house. 

“And suddenly there were the two computers there, that had been reported stolen. They had dramatically reappeared with indecent images on them. What a surprise,” he alleged. 

He alleged that through work in the computer games industry, he was aware of ways images could be put on to computer equipment. 

Robert Hofschroer had earlier alleged to the jury the towers had not been stolen in the burglary and denied putting images on them. Both he and North Yorkshire Police deny all Hofschroer’s allegations against them. 

Perhaps we’re overly cynical, but it does not seem to us as though these allegations were shadowy or vague.

On the other hand, those who are currently trying to have Mr Hofschröer freed seem to specialise in deception, distraction, and dissimulation in their efforts to win public sympathy and cash.

After all, it wouldn’t do for people like Belinda and Andy, who claim to hate paedophiles with every fibre of their being, to be seen openly attempting to loose one on the world…would it?

Peter Hofschröer in his younger days, combining his two favourite interests