Carer Falsely Claimed Thousands In Benefits

A FORMER care worker swindled nearly £20,000 in benefits after being released from prison for sexually abusing girls. Gail Stack was jailed for six years in 2000 after being convicted of a string of sex attacks on young girls.

She was released in 2004, but since then has falsely claimed thousands of pounds.

But Stack walked free from court yesterday after Judge Graham Morrow QC heard she had struggled to cope with life back in the community.

Liverpool crown court heard Stack, who continues to protest her innocence, is consumed by a “sense of injustice”.

Judge Morrow suspended a 26-week prison sentence for 18 months, ordered her to do 150 hours unpaid work and placed her under supervision for 18 months.

The 59-year-old, of Wellington Road, Oxton, Birkenhead, will also be electronically tagged for the next three months.

Ian Mercer, prosecuting, said Stack failed to tell the authorities about a monthly pension she received for her time working with social services.

For more than three years Stack, who admitted making three false statements, fraudulently claimed income support and job seekers’ allowance.

Stack’s barrister Mark Barlow told the court the fraud had been an “oversight” on her part.

He told how Stack had struggled to adjust to life out of prison.

Mr Barlow said: “She spent four years in custody for crimes that she continues to say never happened in the first place.”

Stack was jailed after a Liverpool jury took less than an hour to find her guilty of seven charges of indecent assault and one of indecency with a child.

The offences occurred between 1974 and 1978 while the three victims were resident at Derwent House, then an assessment centre, in Old Swan, Liverpool, and she was a supervisor.

During sentencing Stack, then 50, repeatedly shouted her innocence.

Mr Barlow added: “She came out after a long time in custody with a sense of injustice for what had happened to her and other people in the care support system.”