An American paedophile who sexually targeted a vulnerable Fife boy at Dundee’s Olympia Leisure Centre has been described as “a master manipulator” by one of his child victims.
Brian Christian Hohman (46), from Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was jailed for a year and put on the sex offenders register for 10 years by Sheriff Richard Davidson last week for an act of gross indecency.
The case has caused outrage, prompting questions over how the dangerous sexual predator was able to travel freely without being monitored or notification of his movements relayed to authorities in the countries he visited.
At Berkshire Superior Court in the US in March 1993, Hohman admitted four counts of rape, nine counts of rape and abuse of a child without force, nine counts of indecent assault and battery on a child aged 14 or over, six counts of indecent assault and battery on a person aged 14 or over and four counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
He was ordered to serve a state prison sentence of up to 10 years.
Hohman spent six years behind bars in Massachusetts, but his jail term did nothing to rein in his craving for sexually assaulting juveniles.
Some of Hohman’s Berkshire County victims have come forward after his latest assault in Dundee.
One man, who is now in his mid-30s and asked to remain anonymous, said Hohman was “cunning, dangerous and unrepentant.”
The victim, who is married and has a child, said, “He’s truly a predator. He is a master manipulator.
“Not even six years in prison changed his behaviour.”Victim’s “silent sentence”The victim bumped into Hohman in a marketplace soon after he was released from prison in the late 1990s.
He said, “I was with my wife shopping and I saw him with a woman with a baby in a shopping cart.”
The victim described the meeting as one of the worst moments of his life, adding, “I just grabbed my wife, pulled her close to me and said, ‘That’s Brian’.”
He underwent years of counselling to deal with being the victim of a sexual assault.
“It is a silent sentence you live with this every day for the rest of your life.”
At his Dundee trial Hohman’s solicitor said he was a landscape gardener who travelled abroad in winter.
Initially he stayed at Cambo House in Fife but, after he was charged, moved to Murray Place, St Andrews, and has been in Perth Prison after his admission of the Dundee offence.
Three youngsters from a children’s unit in Kirkcaldy had been taken on an outing to Olympia.
Hohman spoke to the boys in the changing rooms. The boys had gone into the pool and then returned to the changing room, where Hohman had told the victim there was a pornographic image in the toilets and made an indecent suggestion to him.
The boy became alarmed and told his friend. Staff were alerted and police attended but Hohman had left. Police were unable to trace him, but six days later he returned to Olympia.
It emerged during the case that Hohman had an American passport, which has since been surrendered to the court. The Department of Justice admitted there was no blanket policy on whether offenders under supervision in the US were required to give up their travel documents.
Although Hohman’s name is no longer listed on the website for the Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry Board, it still appears on a national registry for sex offenders and Florida’s registry.