Ex-Ku Klux Klan member spared jail after striking woman on Gaza peace march
NO REMORSE: Karl Penn
EXCLUSIVE
By Simon Bristow, Co-Editor
A former member of the Ku Klux Klan has received a suspended prison sentence for striking a woman in the face at a Gaza peace march and shouting racist abuse.
Karl Penn, 52, received an eight-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months, when he was sentenced at Hull Magistrates’ Court this afternoon after being convicted of assault by beating and using racially aggravated threatening words or behaviour at a trial last month.
Penn, of Beverley Road, Hull, was also ordered to do 100 hours of unpaid community work and pay £300 compensation to the assault victim, as well as £325 towards the prosecution costs and a £175 victim surcharge.
District Judge Jayne Bryan also ordered the unrepentant Penn to undergo rehabilitation “to look at your thinking skills and evaluate them”.
The court heard Penn – who was previously a member of “a number of extreme right-wing groups” – did not accept his conviction, had shown no remorse and did not intend to pay any of his financial penalties. The judge told him: “If you don’t pay I make a collection order and the court can deal with it in a different way, which can result in a sentence of imprisonment.”
The judge asked Penn if his position was that despite him being “a member previously of the EDL [English Defence League], Combat 18, the National Front and the Ku Klux Klan, you now have no racist views whatsoever?”
“I don’t consider my views to be racist, no,” said Penn.
SHOUTED RACIST ABUSE: John Francis Gilling, left, and Karl Penn, attending an earlier hearing at Beverley Magistrates’ Court
Co-defendant John Francis Gilling, 61, was convicted of using racially aggravated threatening words or behaviour towards the woman Penn assaulted at the same trial at Beverley Magistrates’ Court on September 9.
He had shouted: “Fight your own wars. F**k off back to Palestine. F**k you, f**k you all.”
Gilling, of York Road, Orchard Park, Hull, received a two-month prison sentence, suspended for 18 months. He was ordered to pay £325 towards the prosecution costs and a £154 victim surcharge.
Sentencing the pair, the judge told them: “There’s no place in our society for racist abuse. Everybody has a right to their opinion. Everybody has a right to disagree with what other people think. But when people decide to disagree in the vociferous way you both did and that was aimed towards a peaceful march about something that was quite dear to people’s hearts makes expressing an opinion a criminal offence.
“Shouting racist abuse in this country at other people is not permitted. It’s against the law and quite rightly so.”
The offences took place in Hull city centre October 28, 2023, during a march calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Gilling had been driving his white Skoda Yeti, with Penn in the back and a man called Martin in the front. They came across the march while looking for somewhere to park as they intended to visit the Ebenezer Morley pub before attending Hull City’s match against Preston North End.
SENTENCING: Hull Magistrates’ Court
About 100 people were on the march and Gilling and Penn began shouting abuse from the opened windows of the car as it drove alongside the march in Paragon Street. In response, a man on the march threw an opened plastic bottle of Oasis orange juice at the car, which went in through an open window. Penn and Gilling then got out.
The assault victim, a clinical psychologist, told the trial she decided to get between the men from the car and other marchers to try to diffuse the situation, but then saw a man lunge towards her. She thought he may have been trying to hit the man who threw the bottle, but struck her instead. Her glasses were knocked off and damaged and she was left with bruising on the left side of her face down to her collar bone.
The judge found that Penn’s striking of the woman was not intentional but he was guilty of assault on a reckless basis.
Penn was arrested and as he was being led to a police vehicle he told the constable: “You don’t know what groups I’m part of. You will be all over the internet for this. You will be sorry.”
His previous convictions include common assault (2016), section 5 public order (2017 and 2018), battery (2017 and 2018), assault occasioning actual bodily harm (2017), and a racially aggravated public order offence (2019).
Giving evidence at his trial, Gilling said his grandfather was a German-Jewish refugee and he was particularly upset about the timing of the march, which happened three weeks after the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7. “If this had been in January or February I might have had a different interpretation of it because of what’s happened since but at that time it was raw,” he said.
Gilling had two “dissimilar” offences on his record but nothing since 2010.
The judge said there were some mitigating features in Gilling’s case. He had expressed remorse, and as well as previously holding voluntary roles in the community, he was also a former chair of the Friends of Hallgate School, a children’s karate and first-aid instructor and was a qualified karate referee.
Gilling also provided character references to the court, including from a neighbour and from a friend of four years. Gilling, who is on benefits, was ordered to pay his court debts at £20 a month.