Anti-paedophile leader is reported for child neglect

The mother of five who led hundreds of anti-paedophile demonstrators around Paulsgrove council estate in Portsmouth for seven nights chanting, "Protect our children", has been reported to social services after her three-year-old son was found naked wandering its streets.

The mother of five who led hundreds of anti-paedophile demonstrators around Paulsgrove council estate in Portsmouth for seven nights chanting, "Protect our children", has been reported to social services after her three-year-old son was found naked wandering its streets.

Katrina Kessell, 33, was being interviewed by a television crew on Thursday morning half-a-mile from her home, when her son was found by a passer-by close to a busy main road shortly before 8.30am.

Police said he had managed to escape from the rear garden of the council house where Ms Kessell lives with four of her children and wandered three streets away.

WPC Kim Gosden said: "He'd gone under the side gate of the house. Ms Kessell said she thought there was someone with him." A report on the incident was yesterday forwarded to social workers in a move described by police as "standard procedure".

Ms Kessell, who has been a prominent figure in the nightly marches through the estate, had said before the incident: "I am a good mother who knows how to look after children. If I was a bad mother, social services would take my children away. My upbringing has made it very hard for me to accept paedophiles in society. It is a natural instinct to want to protect your child and that has been my guiding motive in setting up the campaign."

Yesterday, she declined to comment about her wandering son, and the campaign, which erupted in a whirlwind of violence and hatred, showed little sign of ending.

Like a cancer in remission, an uneasy calm has descended on the Paulsgrove estate. As the campaigners switched appeals for mass action to a grudging acceptance of the need to return to normality, the evidence of a visit by the missile-throwing gangs on yet another Paulsgrove house was glaring.

A shattered pane of glass with the words, "You perv" spray-painted on the remains of the window of a terraced house in Abbeydore Road, bore testimony to the fact that violence fuelled by ill-founded rumour has not yet disappeared from the estate.

The house, attacked on Thursday afternoon minutes after the group announced the suspension of protests, is home to a woman in her fifties, whose brother was a convicted child sex offender. But he has not been in the house for 17 years and his terrified sister has had to leave her home.

A 34-year-old neighbour, whose two young sons saw the attack, said: "It was in broad daylight. A couple of teenagers were daring two others to do it. There was the sound of smashing glass and we knew the idiots behind this violence are not going to go quietly."

The mother, who asked not to be named for fear of recriminations, added: "Children screaming, "Murder the pervert" late at night outside the home of an innocent woman is not the way to deal with paedophiles. It is the way to terrify a community."

Elsewhere on the estate, a consensus was forming that enough was enough in the anti-paedophile battle of Paulsgrove. Victoria Howe, a 22-year-old mother said: "What support there was for the marchers has gone.

"Nobody wants a paedophile living with a panoramic view of your children but, if anything, the last week has shown that naming and shaming does not work. I think we have to trust the authorities to keep offenders under supervision."

Protest spokesman Barry Pettinger said: "We never wanted the violence in the first place. It's just something where people have got emotionally stressed out." Around 200 residents on the estate, home to 15,000, were expected at the open-air meeting last night to hear the proposals agreed with Portsmouth City Council and Hampshire police on Thursday.

A list of names and addresses of 20 "paedophiles" - including those of the homeowner in Abbeydore Road - drawn up by residents will be handed to authorities on Monday in return for a guarantee that details will be checked with official records and genuine sex offenders will be advised to move on.