A pervert pensioner was jailed yesterday after he approached boys fishing on the Tees.
Anthony Harrison, 69, from Stockton, had served a seven year prison sentence for child sex abuse and he was banned from having contact with children under 16.
He was caught on CCTV as he went up to the two young anglers near the Millennium Bridge, Stockton, at 5pm on Saturday July 27.
Prosecutor Emma Atkinson told Teesside Crown Court that police responded to the CCTV sighting of Harrison, who was on a cycle, and he was searched and arrested.
Miss Atkinson said that a 12 year old boy said that he had seen Harrison in the vicinity on a couple of occasions.
He asked them how long they had been fishing and if they had caught anything, and then he gave one boy a roll-up cigarette.
He then produced a pack of biscuits and a can of pop and he told them to share them among themselves.
He said he was surprised that none of them had a top off because it was a warm day, and he asked after one of their friends by name.
Miss Atkinson said that a Police Support officer who searched Harrison’s pockets found a packet of mints and a bag of Blue Riband biscuits.
When he was interviewed he constantly referred to being absentminded about his actions, and he said that he could not tell how old the boys were, but eventually he accepted that he had communicated with them.
She said that Harrison had been jailed for seven years in December 1998 for sexual offences against young boys, and he was given a Sexual Offences Prevention Order banning contact with children under 16.
He failed to comply with a restraining order in 2007, and he had breached the SOPO in July 2012 when he befriended a single mother with a two year old child.
John Nixon, defending, said that Harrison was a loner, an isolated individual, and his reasons for approaching the boys were not clear.
Mr Nixon said: “One cannot say what might have happened had the police not intervened.”
He urged the judge to allow the Probation Service to work with Harrison rather than impose a prison sentence.
The judge said that the SOPO was there to protect Harrison as well as children, and he had breached it on a number of occasions.
The Recorder of Middlesbrough Judge Simon Bourne-Arton QC said: “This is a serious case because you went quite plainly and deliberately up to these boys.
“The worrying aspect of the case is the provision by you of cigarettes and biscuits and the observing by you that they had their tops on.”
The judge added: “I note, and I am concerned, that in your pre-sentence report that you are described as being manipulative and not fully ready to engage with the Probation Service, and you have in the past made a number of verbal threats against the Probation Service, police and members of the judiciary, making it unlikely that you would co-operate.”
Harrison, of Ashbourne Road, Stockton, was jailed for 12 months after he pleaded guilty to a breach of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order.
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