Latest Offenders Oxfordshire

Description

A convicted sex offender was watching porn on a phone he wasn’t allowed to have and using a dating app called ‘WhatsFlirt’.

Stewart Heather, 48, was found to be living at his supposedly ex girlfriend’s house in June, despite telling police officers the previous month that the relationship was over.

There was a two-year-old living at the woman’s property. Social services were unaware that Heather, who was subject to an eight month suspended jail sentence for sending explicit messages with what he thought was a teen girl, was in the house. He had not informed the police of his change of address.

On Thursday (July 27) defence brief Bethan Chichester said her client had not fully understood the terms of the sexual harm prevention order imposed when he was given the suspended sentence last year.

At the time of the first offences the couple had split up and, in using the ‘WhatsFlirt’ app, he was ‘simply trying to lift his spirits’.

Heather subsequently moved in with the woman in order to ‘assist her’, as she was struggling with her mental health, the court heard.

Ms Chichester said Heather was not the ‘regular sort of offender’ of the type usually in front of the courts for child sex offences.

He had been candid in telling her that when he embarked on the behaviour that previously saw him hauled before the courts he was ‘bingeing on cocaine and amphetamine’ and ‘turned to chatting to people online’.

The defendant was deeply ashamed of his actions, the barrister said.

Earlier, prosecutor Nick Ferrari told the court that the police officers responsible for managing Heather in the community visited him at his caravan on May 11.

Then, he claimed to have abstained from viewing pornography, was no longer in a relationship and was ‘doing better’.

He claimed that an Alcatel mobile phone found by the officers and that had not been registered with them was a temporary replacement, his having recently broken.

Mr Ferrari said the phone had been used to look at pornography and to set up an account on ‘WhatsFlirt’.

In mid-June, the police returned to Heather’s caravan in order to conduct a formal interview about the fact he had breached his sexual harm prevention order by having the unregistered mobile and setting up a new social media account.

He was not in the mobile phone. Eventually, they tracked him down to his former partner’s property.

There, they also found a Kindle device that had been used to view pornography and registered with a new email address in Heather’s name.

On the device was a conversation between Heather and his partner in which he appeared to recognise that he would be in trouble if the police caught him living at her property.

Heather, formerly of Schofield Avenue, Witney, pleaded guilty to breaching his sexual harm prevention order and the sex offender notification requirements.

Sending him to prison for 26 months, Judge Michael Gledhill KC said: “I want to send a very clear message out from this court that anybody with your perverted desire to look at filthy pictures, sexual pictures, on the internet or to engage with children for sexual purposes will be dealt with very, very harshly by the courts to deter people like you from doing what you’ve done.”

Description

A man who raped a sleeping teenager in 2019 has been jailed.

Jarrett Good, aged 22, of Murcott Road, Upper Arncott, Bicester, was sentenced to three years and six months’ imprisonment following a trial at Oxford Crown Court on Wednesday (5/7).

A jury unanimously found him guilty of one count of rape at the same court after a three-day trial.

At around 8am on 29 December 2019, Good raped the victim, a girl in her teens, while she was sleeping.

He was arrested on 31 December 2019 and was charged on 28 June 2022.

Investigating officer, Detective Constable Sam Hunter of the Child Abuse and Investigation Unit, said: “I would like to commend the bravery of the victim in coming forward, as well as the investigation which was carried out. Good has has been brought to justice for his crime.

“I hope that this case demonstrates to other people who may have been the victim of such offending that it is never too late to come forward and talk to the police.

“We will listen to you, investigate and do everything that we can to ensure criminals like Good are brought to justice.”

Description

An RAF cadet group leader from Carterton molested one of his young charges while on a radio course with the air force.

Corporal Gary Larner, 28, who has been decorated for his service overseas, was described as having groomed two 15-year-old female cadets in 2018 and 2019.

The married airman touched both girls, tried to kiss one while they were on a cadet course with the Royal Air Force, pestered them over social media, and got both to send him explicit photographs of themselves.

One of his victims told detectives that Larner told her she owed him. She was unsure what he meant, she said, but thought that she might have got on courses through the cadets as a result of entertaining his communication.

The second girls dream of a career in the RAF as a medic had been abandoned, the court heard. The girl suffered from anxiety and nightmares following the defendants abuse of her.

Jailing him for 40 months at Oxford Crown Court on Friday (June 9), Judge Maria Lamb told the disgraced serviceman: You had a position in the RAF that gave you significant responsibilities in terms of your behaviour towards the young cadets under your leadership and that position you sorely abused.

You abused too the trust of the parents of those two girls, who must have assumed that when they were attending the meetings that they did with you that they were attending meetings with somebody who bore in mind the safeguarding of their daughters.

Because you seriously undermined the safeguarding provisions which had been put in place by the RAF, not least by persisting in contacting them over social mediadespite having been warned not to do so.

Prosecutor Gabrielle McAvock told the court that Larner, then around 23 years old, met both his victims through his voluntary work with the air cadets.

Both girls were 15 when they were touched sexually by the RAF man and sent him explicit photographs at his request.

She sent him photographs of her body at his request, the court heard. He also went to her home while her mother was at work, removing her trousers and touching the girl.

The second victim was also 15 years old when, in September and October 2019, she was targeted by the cadet leader.

In September 2019, while on an RAF radio course, he slipped his hand beneath a table and touched the girls thigh over her combat trousers. He tried to kiss her later the same day.

On other occasions, the pair were said to have kissed in a field near the girls home. Like the first victim, she sent Larner images of herself at his request.

Ms McAvock said the offending was aggravated by the fact Larner had failed to respond to previous warnings by his bosses in the RAF after it was found he was talking to the cadets on social media.

Interviewed by the police in 2020 then again the following year, Larner denied the allegations and claimed not to have met the girls outside cadets.

The defendant, of Robinson Close, Carterton, initially denied any wrongdoing but eventually pleaded guilty in April to six charges of sexual activity with a child, sparing the girls from having to give pre-recorded evidence.

Although not charged with further offences, the court heard in April that detectives had uncovered text messages between Larner and a third cadet unconnected to the two victims in which they spoke in graphic, sexual terms.

The prosecution had hoped to put the texts in front of the jury at Larners trial as evidence of the RAF mans alleged bad character, but the Crowns application was refused by the judge.

Alistair Grainger, mitigating for Larner on Friday, said his client was a decorated airman with a number of restricted honours awarded by senior RAF officers that were so secret the judge was not entitled to have sight of them. Among the character references provided in his support was one from a Squadron Leader Parry.

Larner had been commended for his involvement in humanitarian efforts, including in the wake of the 2015 terrorist attack on a beach resort in Tunisia, the court heard.

The barrister pointed to his clients remorse, quoting Larners words that he had disgraced himself.

The airman will remain on the sex offender register for life.

Description

Following an investigation by Thames Valley Police’s Child Abuse Investigation Unit, a man has been sentenced to prison for a number of child sex offences in Oxford.

William Swandle, aged 65, of no fixed abode, pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual assault of a child by penetration and two further counts of sexual assault of a child in a hearing at Oxford Crown Court on 27 April.

Returning to the same court for sentencing on Friday (26/5), Swandle was jailed for a total of eight years with an additional year to serve on licence.

The offences all occurred over a two-year period in Abingdon against a single female victim aged under 13.

Investigating officer Detective Constable Sarah Tibble of the Child Abuse Investigation Unit, said: “The young victim in this case has suffered the most horrendous of crimes, which nobody should have to experience.

“She has been incredibly brave in coming forward and reporting this to the police, and I want to commend her and her family for doing so.

“Swandle has now been sentenced to a significant prison sentence, which reflects the seriousness of his crimes.

“I hope that the victim and her family feel justice has been served.

“Thames Valley Police is committed to bringing offenders such as Swandle to justice. We will always listen to and support victims of such abhorrent crimes and put offenders before the courts to face the consequences of their actions.”

Description

RAF chiefs have housed a child rapist on a military family estate despite his guilty pleas to a series of sickening offences.

Air chiefs claim red tape stops them instantly kicking out disgraced serviceman Glenn Poyner. 

Instead the 35-year-old paedophile has been given a property near a primary school at RAF Benson in Oxfordshire.

He was apparently moved to the estate from a block housing unattached male colleagues because of threats made against him.

Terrified parents living at the base fear for their youngsters, who had been able to play outside in safety.

Poyner admitted multiple counts of raping a 13-year-old among other child sex crimes at a court hearing earlier this month. Among his victims was the relative of a colleague.

He is not due to be sentenced until August and senior officers have not yet discharged him from the forces.

Families expected him to be kicked out on the day of his guilty pleas but the officers have only just started to fill in the paperwork.

Until all the red tape has been cleared, the plan is for Poyner to be housed at the base, the Mail has learned.

Furious Benson residents accuse RAF chiefs of prioritising the paedophile's welfare over the safety of their children.

Poyner holds the rank of air specialist – a gender-neutral title recently introduced by top brass. He will be paid by the RAF until the discharge process is completed.

One mother said: 'I am petrified that this monster will use his last months of freedom to strike again.

'Where's the protection? There are children everywhere here, playing happily outside. I can't rest for a second.

'He should be behind bars. It is a disgrace the air chiefs still haven't kicked him out of the RAF.'

At Telford Magistrates' Court on May 12 Poyner admitted four counts of rape, an indecent assault and other sexual activities with children between 2018 and 2021.

He was stationed at RAF Shawbury in Shropshire, a UK centre for pilot training. He later moved to RAF Benson.

At the hearing, prosecutor Mark Connor told the judge: 'The defendant has entered guilty pleas which adequately reflect the offending behaviour over a number of years.

'The prosecution accepts those pleas with regard to the court's overall sentencing powers.'

Judge Peter Barrie granted Poyner bail ahead of a sentencing hearing scheduled for August 11, when he is expected to be jailed.

The judge also ordered a psychiatric assessment to consider the sex offender's threat to the public.

While Poyner was given a curfew and must wear a tracking tag, service families insist they should be spared the worry of him living nearby.

His property is being monitored by RAF Police, who have stepped up patrols of the estate following complaints from parents.

RAF Benson, near Wallingford, is a support helicopter main operating base.

The failure by chiefs to manage Poyner's case – and to prioritise the concerns of service families – is the latest in a string of embarrassing failures by RAF bosses.

It follows the shocking treatment of female personnel by pilots, including multiple claims of sexual assault, in the Red Arrows display team.

The head of the RAF, Sir Mike Wigston, has also faced criticism over a chronic shortage of frontline pilots and a recruitment policy that appeared to discriminate against white male applicants.

The RAF said: 'We are aware that a service person residing at RAF Benson pleaded guilty to a number of serious sexual offences.

'The RAF is unable to comment on individual cases, not offer comment while legal proceedings are ongoing.'

Description

A disgraced rapist police officer claimed to have been looking at indecent images of children – to help him with post-traumatic stress.

Former traffic cop Richard Hale, 41, was handed a seven year jail sentence in 2016 for raping a woman after overpowering her in his bedroom in Carterton in 2001 – two years before he joined Thames Valley Police.

He continues to maintain his innocence to the charge.

On Thursday (April 27), Oxford Crown Court heard that Hale was released from prison on licence in April 2020, within weeks of the first national lockdown being imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Mitigating, Lyall Thompson told Judge Ian Pringle KC: “All found that [lockdown] very difficult to come to terms with.

"It must have been even harder for someone who had been in custody for approximately three-and-a-half years.”

His client had described it as like ‘going from one type of prison to another’, Mr Thompson said.

A former roads policing officer who had seen crashes on a ‘regular basis’, he suffered from ‘significant post-traumatic stress disorder’, the court was told.

He experienced nightmares, headaches and ‘intrusive thoughts’.

It was suggested that this was one of the reasons why he was looking at indecent images of children.

A small number of child sex abuse images in categories A to C were found on his digital devices together with prohibited images of children and extreme pornography.

Sentencing, Judge Pringle told Hale: “You say that you started to access images because it would deal with the pain you felt from some of the trauma you underwent when you were serving as a police officer.

“I frankly find that explanation difficult but I’ve read a report about you; a trauma therapy report. You went and got trauma therapy off your own back; at least that says something about you.”

He said: “Make no bones about it, by accessing these images you create a market and that market then takes young children and has them grotesquely abused for your pleasure.

“I hope that you remember that if you are ever tempted to look at such images again.”

Hale, of Peel Place, Carterton, pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court to possession of indecent and prohibited images of children and possession of extreme pornography.

The judge imposed 16 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years. Hale must do 120 hours of unpaid work and sex offender rehabilitation programmes.

When Hale was sentenced in 2016, then deputy chief constable - now chief constable - Jason Hogg said: "There is no place in the force for those who commit offences of this nature."

The force said it was unable to provide a photograph of Hale as it claimed it did not have one. 

Description

A man was downloading vile child sex abuse images from his 'hidden' bedroom.

Liam Wishart, 35, told police officers who arrested him after a raid on the Bloxham home he shared with his mum that he had no indecent images of children and that he was sexually attracted to those of his own age.

But his lies were exposed when forensics specialists analysed his digital devices, uncovering 266 images in the most serious category – A – 115 in category B and 127 in category C.

Among the material found were images showing very young girls being sexually abused, Oxford Crown Court heard.

There was also evidence he had searched the internet for indecent images of children and chatted with others with a similar interest between 2016 and 2021.

Police officers raided the property in June 2021, after receiving a tip-off that Wishart had been downloading the vile child sex abuse material.

His bedroom – the door to which was hidden behind a bookcase – was searched and his digital devices seized.

The officers also found a can of pepper spray. The spray is classed as a prohibited weapon under firearm laws.

A cache of £28 notes was found and he was initially charged with possession of counterfeit money.

However, the charge was eventually dropped. On Friday (March 31) judge Recorder Paul Reid told prosecutor Robert Lindsey that he was ‘puzzled’ as to why the charges were brought in the first place, characterising the fake notes as ‘Monopoly money’.

When he was interviewed by the police, Wishart submitted a prepared statement denying that he was in possession of indecent images of children or that he had used ‘peer to peer’ websites to obtain them.

He claimed that friends would use his laptop and that the WiFi at his house was not password-protected.

Wishart, of Courtington Lane, Bloxham, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to possession of indecent images of children and possession of the prohibited weapon. He had no previous convictions.

Gordana Austin, mitigating, said the Bloxham man was his mother’s carer and worked from home as a graphic designer. He had spent six weeks in prison on remand.

Imposing nine months’ imprisonment suspended for a year-and-a-half, Recorder Reid told Wishart: “The pre-sentence report reveals that you have an understanding now of the particularly vile nature of this practice, because as I have said it is not just being in possession of these disgusting photographs

“They are not just disgusting photographs. They show the commission of disgusting offences against children.

“Each of these hundreds of photographs is a further abuse.”

Wishart was ordered to do 100 hours of unpaid work, up to 60 rehabilitation activity requirement days and pay £425 in costs.

He was made subject to a sexual harm prevention order and will be on the sex offender register for 10 years.

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A ‘lonely’ convicted paedophile appearing before a crown court judge for the fourth time in 10 years was spared a spell in prison – for having McAfee anti-virus on his laptop.

But Anthony Edwards was warned that the ‘only sanction available’ if he breached his sexual harm prevention order again or committed further offences in the next two years would be an immediate jail term.

On Thursday, Oxford Crown Court heard that 63-year-old Edwards was originally given an indefinite sexual harm prevention order and placed on the sex offender register for life after he was convicted in 2013 of sexually assaulting a girl.

He was later convicted of having indecent images of children and, in 2018, of flouting the court order designed to limit his access to the web.

Prosecuting, Robert Lindsey said a police officer installed monitoring software on Edwards’ HP laptop in October 2018.

Three months later, in January 2019, Edwards asked his supervising officer if he could ‘defragment’ the laptop’s hard drive. “The officer said no,” the prosecutor told the court.

By 2020, the defendant raised concerns that his laptop was running slowly and that it might have been hit by a computer virus. The officer was ‘somewhat suspicious’ of Edwards’ explanations, Mr Lindsey said – prompting the judge to add: “I’m not surprised.”

Checks showed that although the police monitoring software was still installed on the computer, it had not been working since April 2019.

Edwards had downloaded McAfee anti-virus software and the computer’s hard drive was ‘empty’, indicating that the convicted sex offender had deleted his internet browser history in spite of a court order banning him from doing so.

Edwards, of Ballards Close, Shipton-under-Wychwood, pleaded guilty to breaching his sexual harm prevention order.

He also admitted breaching sex offender notification requirements by failing to attend a police station within three days of his annual requirement to ‘re-register’ his details in 2021.

Mitigating, Gordana Austin said her client felt ‘isolated and lonely’. His mother, with whom he lived and for whom he cared, sadly died last year and the council was looking to move him to supported accommodation.

Sentencing him to a two year community order, Recorder John Hardy KC told Edwards: “Courts impose orders upon you and people like you for reasons.

“Where those orders are breached, courts normally take the view that a person who’s been leniently sentenced in the past is being contemptuous of the order of the court and therefore immediate custody is the only sanction available.

“That will be the case if you breach the order I am now about to impose.”

Edwards was ordered to complete up to 30 rehabilitation activity requirement days and was banned from deleting his internet history or tampering with ‘e-safe’ software installed on his devices by the police.

He must pay £200 in costs to the Crown Prosecution Service.

Description

A company director told a 14-year-old ‘girl’ who asked him for a job that she could be ‘daddy’s sex slave’.

Paul McCombe, 49, had been due to stand trial at Oxford Crown Court on a charge of attempted sexual communication with a child.

But he pleaded guilty on Monday (February 20) after a judge threw out submissions that the prosecution should be stopped as McCombe had been ‘entrapped’ in the undercover police sting operation.

McCombe. who has previously been convicted of sending sexual messages to children, added the ‘girl’ on Snapchat on July 15. The Oxfordshire man claimed to be called Connor Jones, a man in his late 20s.

By July 19, the girl ‘M’ – in fact a decoy account run by an undercover police officer – asked ‘CJ’ whether she knew him. He replied: “No.”

They began exchanging messages. Those made it clear McCombe understood the girl’s purported age, as at one point he asked: “When was you 14? You are sexy.”

Over the ensuing days, they sent a series of images to each other. None of hers were sexual, while his showed his exposed groin.

In another exchange, she told McCombe she was going to Asda with her mum and asked him she should ring him. “Yes, as long as you are naked hahaha,” he replied.

‘M’ asked the defendant what he did for a living. Told that he ran his own company, she asked him for a job. He said: “You can be daddy’s sex slave.”

Later in their correspondence, he said he would come to see her and made a veiled reference to sexual activity that could happen between them on that visit. She had earlier told him she lived in Newcastle, while McCombe said he lived in Oxford.

Lawyers for McCombe had tried to get the incriminating Snapchat messages he sent the decoy account thrown out, which would have cut the prosecution’s case at the knees.

Recorder John Ryder KC did not buy Richard Sutton KC’s argument that McCombe was the victim of police entrapment and messages that were ‘come hither in nature’. He ruled that the messages were admissible – and so could go in front of the jury.

After that ruling, McCombe, formerly of an address in Shrivenham, returned to courtroom four and entered his guilty plea to a single count of attempted sexual communication with a child under-16.

He was granted conditional bail to return to court on April 21.

Description

Jurors convicted a man of breaching his court order by having unsupervised contact with two children.

Alan Thompson, 56, of Long Wittenham, was originally given his sexual offences prevention order after he was convicted 15-years-ago of sexual activity with a child. The order bans him from having unsupervised contact with children, unless he had the permission of the child’s parents or the contact was ‘inadvertent’.

CCTV at the hotel where Thompson was staying in November 2020 showed him driving his mobility scooter towards his ground floor room – followed by a teenage boy and girl, Oxford Crown Court heard. The pair went to the toilet, while he went to his bedroom.

He was allowed to be with the boy, as the child’s guardian was aware of his previous convictions.

But despite Thompson’s claims to the contrary, the girl’s mother told jurors she had no idea that he was a registered sex offender.

Cross-examined on Monday, it was put to the woman that she had been aware of his past and had even replied to Thompson’s confession of his past offending with the words: “Okay, thanks for telling me, we’ll leave it in the past where it belongs.”

However, she maintained she ‘didn’t know nothing about his background’.

Jurors convicted Thompson on Tuesday (February 7) of breaching his sexual offences prevention order. He will be sentenced next month, with Judge Ian Pringle KC ordering a pre-sentence report.

The maximum sentence for the offence is five years’ imprisonment, although punishments vary depending on the blameworthiness of the offender and the amount of harm they have caused.

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A man from Banbury has been jailed after being found guilty of nine child sex crimes over a two-year period.

Spencer King, aged 54, formerly of Banbury, abused the victim over a two-year period, before she bravely reported it to Northamptonshire Police and he was subsequently charged with a number of offences.

When interviewed by the police, King denied the allegations and went on to plead not guilty at Northampton Crown Court, which meant forced the case to go to a trial.

King was convicted of by a jury of seven counts of sexual assault, one count of sexually assaulting a girl under 13, and one count of sexually assaulting a girl aged 13-15 by penetration last November.

Last week (February 3) King was sentenced to nine years and six months in prison at Northampton Crown Court and was also handed a Sexual Harm Prevention Order and a restraining order which will run indefinitely.

Detective Constable James Wright of the Child Abuse Investigation Unit, said: “This case took a long time to bring to trial due to a number of issues and the Covid-19 pandemic, but the victim never waived.

“She has shown strength, bravery and tenacity beyond her years, facing Spencer King at court during the trial to tell him and the jury exactly what he had done to her. She showed him that what he did to her, although having a profound effect on her, was not going to rule her life.

“King continued to deny the allegations that were made against him during the course of the investigation and in the giving of his evidence during the trial, but the jury saw through these lies and convicted him of a number of serious sexual offences.

“He will now serve his sentence for this horrendous abuse, and hopefully the time that he will spend in prison will give him the opportunity to reflect on his abhorrent actions.”

Description

A ‘selfish’ skate park rapist has been jailed for four-and-a-half years.

Jay Spinks’ decision to carry on despite his then 15-year-old victim making clear she did not want to have sex with the 20-year-old in September 2020 was labelled a ‘selfish act’ by the judge who jailed him on Wednesday.

Judge Maria Lamb told Spinks, now 22: “It was all about self-gratification and although [your victim] was prepared to accept a certain amount of intimacy between you, she made it quite clear that she was not consenting to sexual intercourse with you.”

The Bicester man was found guilty at Oxford Crown Court last year of raping the girl in a skate park in his hometown on September 4, 2020.

The pair had been intimate on the evening of the sexual assault, the jury heard.

However, she had made it clear she did not want to have sex with him.

Spinks was said to be under the influence of alcohol and drugs at the time.

In a victim impact statement summarised to the court by prosecutor Ian Hope, the woman said she had suffered flashbacks to the incident.

Her GCSE exam results had suffered and she had ‘pushed away male contact’, she said.

Mr Hope said the girl had sought help for post-traumatic stress disorder and feelings of anxiety.

Jailing him for four-and-a-half years, Judge Lamb said: “Whatever the situation back in 2020, when you were I think rather out of control drinking, taking drugs, getting yourself into criminal offending albeit not of a like nature, you have now moved on and I hope put that time behind you.

“Of course, for your victim the effects are still having an impact and are likely to be so for time without limit in the future.”

Mitigating, James Hay described 2020 as a ‘dark period’ in his client’s life ‘with a downward spiral of poor decision making due to associating with a negative peer group and increasing substance misuse’.

With the help of addiction charity Turning Point he had addressed the drug addiction that followed his substance misuse, the barrister said.

“He knows he will inevitably receive an immediate custodial sentence of some length,” Mr Hay told the judge.

Spinks’ thoughts were not for himself but his parents, he added.

Character references were said to paint a picture of the rapist as a ‘grounded and pleasant young man’.

Spinks, of Woodfield, Bicester, will serve two-thirds of his jail sentence in custody before his automatic release.

He remains on the sex offender register for life.

Description

A teenager who got a primary school-aged girl to perform sex acts on him has been jailed for five years.

The girl – now a young woman – spoke of the ‘sense of dread’ she felt on ‘each and every occasion’ she was invited into Jake Nolan’s bedroom to endure what she later realised were sickening sex assaults.

Having given evidence at Nolan’s trial in October, the woman – who cannot be identified for legal reasons – spoke of the devastating impact the now 26-year-old’s abuse has had upon her.

Prosecutor Mark Seymour suggested that the impact on the victim could amount to ‘extreme psychological harm’, putting the offending in the most serious category in the sentencing guidelines given to judges.

“If the level of harm in terms of psychological impact that is obviously writ large in the statement doesn’t constitute extreme harm it is really quite hard to see what would – short, actually, a complainant ending her own life,” the barrister said.

Sending him to prison for five years for rape of a child under-13 and causing or inciting a child under-13 to engage in sexual activity, Judge Maria Lamb told Nolan: “The impact which you have had upon your victim has been devastating. It is clear – quite wrongly – that she blamed herself for what had been done to her.

“She has no reason to reproach herself at all.

"She was a child at the time these things were perpetrated against her by you.”

Judge Lamb described the victim’s impact statement as ‘heartbreaking’.

Had Nolan been an adult when he carried out the abuse and not a child in his early teens, he would have faced a prison sentence around twice as long as the one he actually received.

John Carmichael, mitigating, reminded the judge of his client’s difficult upbringing. Noting that the offences had been committed while Nolan was drunk or under the influence of alcohol, he said: “One asks oneself the question what on earth is he doing with the alcohol? Where was the control from the family?”

Nolan’s older brother had been jailed for sexual offending of his own, the court heard. Mr Carmichael said his client had grown up with a ‘lack of role models’.

The defendant’s education had been disrupted, he had ‘intellectual difficulties’ and he had not worked for a number of years.

Nolan, of Grange Beck, Didcot, will be on the sex offender register for life and will be subject to an indefinite sexual harm prevention order. 

Description

A convicted sex offender who admitted breaching a court order limiting his access to the web was allowed to walk from court in part because he was still waiting for a place on a probation rehabilitation scheme.

Connor Russell, 20, was spared an immediate prison sentence last year, when a judge at Oxford Crown Court gave him a 16 month suspended jail sentence for accessing child sex abuse 'filth' online, which he had apparently been looking at since the aged of 11.

As part of that suspended sentence order he was required to complete an intensive sex offender rehabilitation programme, called Horizon.

But by the time police made an unannounced trip to his home this September almost a year after his sentence was imposed he was still on the waiting list for a place on the scheme.

He admitted seven breaches of the sexual harm prevention order imposed last year, including by failing to register a phone and other internet-enabled devices with Thames Valley Police.

On Wednesday, Judge Ian Pringle KC was told that Russell had a place on the Horizon programme starting next January.

And his barrister, Kellie Enever, claimed it would be unjust for the judge to activate the 16 month suspended sentence - given her client had not been given a chance to start the rehabilitative course that might prevent him offending in the future.

The young man, who was remanded into prison by the magistrates in September, also struggled with a number of mental health issues.

Setting out the circumstances surrounding the latest offending, Judge Pringle said: Anyone listening to those facts would think well, I simply send you to prison.

But your counsel has ably submitted to me you havent really had a chance to try to rectify the problems that you have.

What I am going to do is take an unusual course in your case.

"Your Horizon programme is due to start in January. Thats a demanding programme and it may, at your young age, put you off your urge to access this sort of material.

He said he would adjourn sentencing for six months, giving Russell a chance to start the course.

As conditions of the adjournment, Russell was required to comply with the probation service, do the Horizon course and try to tackle his mental health.

[If] I can see that youve made significant progress in engaging on the Horizon Programme and treating your mental health and of course that youve not committed any further offences or breached the sexual harm prevention order that you still have, then I may not send you to prison, he said.

Russell, of Fulwell Close, Banbury, was bailed to return to court on May 19 next year.

Description

A convicted sex offender was caught in the police station car park talking into the mobile phone he should not have had.

Kevin Dale had gone to Abingdon police station on September 7 to get specialist ‘risk management’ software installed onto a different smartphone – in compliance with a court-imposed sexual harm prevention order.

But when the police officer came out of the station around an hour later with 49-year-old Dale’s ‘safe’ phone, she found him using another phone that he had not informed Thames Valley Police about, Oxford Crown Court heard.

Dale, who was out of prison on licence at the time, was discovered to have downloaded a number of apps onto the new phone – including Chatiw, which he has previously been jailed for using in breach of the court order.

Prosecutor Cathy Olliver said that, when he was found on the phone, he was talking to a number saved as ‘Mommy1010’.

“Mr Dale admitted instantly he got the phone. He said he was not trying to get sexual access to children. This time, he was talking to women online and, indeed, there were explicit sexual pictures of women he was talking to on the phone,” the prosecutor said.

He claimed to have been given the phone by his painter and decorator employer to take pictures of his finished jobs. But Dale failed to mention to his boss that his court order required his internet-enabled devices to be registered with the police.

Dale, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court earlier this month to breach of the sexual harm prevention order.

He was convicted in 2019 and 2020 for sexual communication with children, sending explicit message via chatroom apps. In 2020, when he was also dealt with for breaching his sexual harm prevention order, he received three years’ imprisonment.

Mitigating, Alice Dodd said that prior to his incarceration on remand, her client had lived at home with his elderly parents. Both relied heavily upon him.

She told the judge: “He knows he has let them down and is worried about how they will cope.”

Dale had struggled with the social isolation that came with his status as a convicted sex offender, the court heard. “He’s found it difficult to make friends because of that. He feels the stigma very heavily.”

Sentencing Dale to two years’ imprisonment, Judge Ian Pringle KC noted that he had been ‘very nervous’ when he was caught with the new phone in the police station car park.

“Rightly so,” he added, “because you’d been using on that phone the same online chat applications that you’d been using both in 2017 [convicted in 2019] and in 2020.

“Clearly, the message hadn’t got home to you at all.”