David Pearce, a 70-year-old sexual predator from Cambridgeshire, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison after a one-in-a-billion DNA match linked him to crimes committed nearly 30 years ago. The sentence was handed down at Snaresbrook Crown Court on Friday, following his guilty pleas to seven sex offences.
Crimes at Barking park lido in 1990
On 23 April 1990, Pearce approached four children—two boys and two girls aged between eight and 11—at the Barking park lido. He pretended to be a police officer or caretaker, claiming keys were missing, before assaulting them. The children fled to a nearby police station, enabling officers to secure statements, cordon off the area, and preserve the scene. DNA was recovered from a bench in a changing cubicle but did not match anyone in the database at the time. The case was filed after initial inquiries were exhausted.
1996 incident with identical pattern
In 2019, Pearce was arrested for voyeurism, and his DNA proved a one-in-a-billion match to the lido suspect. Detectives then reviewed similar reports and found a victim statement from 1996, where a 13-year-old girl said a man forced her into shrubbery in a Barking park and assaulted her while claiming to search for lost keys. Pearce was questioned about that incident, and the victim identified him in a parade. Circumstantial evidence, including Pearce living in the area in 1990 and owning a food truck near the park in 1996, supported the case.
Police and forensic praise
Detective Constable Tony Anionwu, from the Met’s Specialist Crime Unit, said: “Pearce was a predator who disguised himself as someone in a position of trust to exploit and assault young children. His actions had a lasting impact, and I would like to thank the victim-survivors for their unwavering resilience and profound patience while we strived for justice.” Forensic scientist Bridget March, responsible for the 2019 DNA match, stated: “The advances in science and discovery of the match to Pearce’s DNA profile ultimately paved the way to secure admissible evidence.”
Additional charges left on file
Police noted that Pearce denied a further four counts of indecent assault, six counts of attempting an act of indecency with a child, and two counts of indecency with a child relating to 12 other children from the 1990s. The prosecution chose to leave those charges on file after his guilty pleas were entered. The Metropolitan Police have more than tripled arrests and charges for sexual assault over the past five years.
