There’s nothing quite like a child-rapist-on-the-loose story to get the tabloid media baying for blood, and so it went over the last two days in Victoria after a sex offender on a supervision order gave authorities the slip at a cafe in Station Street, Fairfield.

But in the frenzy over the incident, some reporters appear to have taken leave of the facts, with Channel Seven’s Norm Beaman plucking a sequence of events out of thin air in his bid to crunch Corrections Victoria.

On Wednesday afternoon at about 12:45pm, the offender — on an Extended Supervision Order and now the subject of a County Court order shielding his identity — was sipping coffee with his Corrective Services overseer at Pantheon Cakes, following a regular appointment at the nearby Disability Forensic Assessment and Treatment Service Centre.

After requesting to go to the toilet, the man legged it, escaping on foot via a back exit. Last night, after a day on the run — and wall-to-wall coverage — the offender was finally captured in Sydney and is facing extradition back to Victoria.

Yesterday, the Herald Sun leapt into action — “Child sex sicko on run” — followed up by some predictable tut-tutting from 3AW’s Neil Mitchell over the perils of lenient sentencing.  TV reporters from all the major networks descended on Station Street to do vox-pops with outraged locals.

On their bulletins last night, Nine, Seven and Ten mocked Corrections Comissioner Bob Hastings, using highly selective quotes from a damage-control press conference to paint the bureaucrat into a corner. But Seven went one better, sending Beaman to stage a dramatic re-enactment of the getaway in front of 424,000 viewers.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0NIcAcjZHw[/youtube]

The only problem was, Beaman had picked the wrong cafe, Alfio’s, despite earlier protestations from its owner that he had never seen the deviant. Still, Beaman seemed pretty sure of himself:

“The 36-year old who has a shocking record for child sex abuse walked to freedom from this cafe in Fairfield while on a supervised outing for rehabilitation treatment. His supervisor took him there because he wanted to have a coffee, and then go to the toilet.

“And after a visit to the gents, escape for this serial sex offender was very easy — he simply strolled out through this back veranda…arrangement…under a roller door and there was freedom.”

The actual cafe where the offender had sipped coffee, Pantheon Cakes further down the Station Street strip, was featured on Ten and Nine, but not Seven, who maintained that Alfio’s was the site of the getaway. Chafic Farah from Alfio’s told Crikey he told reporters from all networks he had never seen the man. Nevertheless Beaman was insistent, claiming he had inside information the getaway had occurred on Farah’s premises.

Farah couldn’t believe it when the footage was aired on Seven: “I told the reporters from Ten, Nine and Seven that I had never seen the guy. But he [Beaman] was so convinced it was the place…that’s why I was surprised that they were the only ones who aired it.”

Farah said the incorrect report had the potential to damage his cafe’s business. “I am disappointed that we’ve been depicted in this way,” he said. “This is a suburb with a lot of kids and people are talking about it. This wasn’t the place. Seven were wrong.”

A spokesperson for Pantheon Cakes told Crikey the man was a regular, and had visited the cafe once a week for “a few years” after appointments at the nearby Department of Human Services facility.

“I was shocked, it was a just a normal guy who had been in here once a week for a few years,” they said.

Over at Nine, reporter Brendan Roberts — who claimed that the offender had been sighted in the CBD yesterday — correctly identified Pantheon before adding, rather unfortunately, that authorities “had been caught with their pants down” over the search for the sex fiend.

The reports had a very quick shelf life. Just minutes after the Seven and Nine stories aired, the offender was caught in the Sydney suburb of Menai, with ABC News reporting the update in its bulletin at 7pm. Beaman did not respond to queries from Crikey this morning.