Theo Briggs arrested after escaping from Corella House
EXTREMELY dangerous sex offenders are escaping a village in Victoria where they are meant to be kept away from the community.
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A DANGEROUS sex offender who escaped from the “Village of the Damned” has been caught.
Theo Briggs, 24, escaped from the Corella Place correctional facility in Ararat on Monday morning.
He was arrested about 12.30pm at the side of the road in Beaufort and is now in police custody.
Briggs cut off his tracking bracelet and fled from Corella Place, also known at the “Village of the Damned”, about 1am.
Briggs is a callous criminal from Shepparton in northern Victoria with a very dark history.
Fairfax Media reports in 2009, when he was 17, Briggs was convicted of breaking into a home armed with a knife.
He raped a woman inside the house while a number of children were home.
Fairfax Media reports he fell asleep on the bed and police caught him.
In 2012 he was sentenced to two-and-a-half years after breaking into outreach accommodation in Reservoir, 12km north of Melbourne’s CBD.
A woman with an intellectual disability found Briggs in her room.
Corella Place is the most notorious home for paedophiles and sex offenders in Victoria.
It’s just two kilometres from Ararat’s town centre.
It’s a place where dangerous offenders go after serving their prison sentence, because they are a threat to the community.
If authorities decide they shouldn’t fully experience freedom, they are sent to the “Village of the Damned”.
The sex offenders aren’t held captive in the village by armed guards and fences and only have GPS ankle bracelets.
They are allowed to leave the village at times, if they are supervised, and there is a curfew.
There are more than 50 sex offenders at Corella Place and Briggs isn’t the first to escape.
In 2013 David Byrnes and Sean Carmody-Coyle fled from the village.
Byrnes was moved to Corella Place after he served a sentence for raping a five-year-old boy in a toilet at Belmont Shopping Centre in Perth in 2004.
He was jailed for three years and six months and Fairfax Media reported last year Byrnes was also accused of raping his elderly neighbour at Corella Place four times.
Less is known about Camody-Coyle’s crimes but he escaped Corella Place twice in less than a year.
He last escaped in 2014 and at the time police believed he was armed with knives.
The Herald Sun reported Carmody-Coyle was moved to Corella Place in February 2013 on a five year order.
Dangerous sex offender Andrew Darling also escaped from the village in 2014.
He was convicted for raping a 13-year-old girl during a burglary.
The Herald Sun reported police were concerned when he escaped Corella Place because he had bush survival skills and believed he would hide out in abandoned sheds on properties.
He was at large for about a week.
Originally published as Theo Briggs arrested after escaping from Corella House
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