West Yorkshire sex offender avoids being jail after being caught with unregistered phone
Nigel Elwick, 60, was handed a suspended sentence and a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) last year after he was convicted of attempting to engage a child in sexual conversation online while he was living in Lincolnshire.
Under the terms of the order he must inform police about any devices that can access the internet.
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Hide AdElwick appeared at Leeds Crown Court to answer a charge of breaching the SHPO, which he admitted, along with committing an offence while already on a suspended sentence.
Anna Bond, prosecuting, said officers went to Elwick's house on Cambridge Street, Normanton, Wakefield in November last year over a different matter, and while they were there asked to check his phone.
On his Nokia phone they found a photo of another phone, which he then confessed he had upstairs.
Both phones were checked and there was no evidence of any illegal activity.
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Hide AdNo mitigation was presented to the court after Judge Tom Bayliss QC said he would not be activating the suspended sentence for his previous conviction.
Judge Bayliss said: "This was, in my view, a serious and deliberate breach.
"It has a purpose - to stop people like you from offending.
"The terms are meant to be draconian."
He handed him a new 13-month jail term, suspended for 12 months.
Elwick was convicted at Grimsby Crown Court last year after making sexually-suggestive comments to what he thought was a 13-year-old girl over the internet.