A pervert in a BMW convertible who targeted teenage girls was sentenced to a sex offender’s programme yesterday after a van driver wrote down his number.
Scaffolder Dean Richardson wore an orange high-visability jacket when he performed sex acts in front of girls on streets in Redcar and Normanby over a two-month period.
The 49-year-old had convictions for similar behaviour from 1992 and he had received help from the probation service which stopped his offending for a time.
But he said that he resumed his shocking offences again after problems with his girlfriend.
Prosecutor Harry Hadfield told Teesside Crown Court that Richardson said in interview that he wore his high-vis jacket because he wanted the girls to see him.
But one 16-year-old said in a victim impact statement that she was scared and shocked because she thought that she might get raped.
Richardson had 10 convictions for 18 offences marking similar behaviour in 1992, 1997, 2003 and 2007.
Brian Mark, defending, said that it was the first time that the defendant had been remanded in custody and it was the equivalent of two months.
Mr Mark added: “He pleaded guilty on the very first occasion when he was arrested, and he volunteered having committed some offences which had not even been reported to the police.
“He tells me that he never wants to go back to prison again, and you cannot underestimate the power that a short prison stay has in stopping him behaving in this way.
“The assistance that he could get together with his memory of being in prison would give him the opportunity to function.”
Mr Mark said that a psychiatrist had identified that the suicide of Richardson’s father when he was 13 was still ungrieved by him and it had contributed to his behaviour.
He added that Richardson and the public would benefit if the defendant was given a suspended sentence and a sexual offender’s treatment programme.
“That would help him to keep his job and his mortgaged home, and the suspended sentence would be a Sword of Damocles hanging over him,” he said.
The judge, Recorder Eric Elliott QC, told Richardson: “I take the view that there is very little dispute that you were targeting young girls.
“You are clearly a hardworking man and you have had a taste of custody.
“I have to decide what is not only the best for you but for the public in that there is a high risk of offending behaviour.”
Richardson, of Thomas Street, Skelton, was given a 16-month jail sentence, suspended for two years with supervision and attendance on the Northumbria Sex Offender’s Treatment programme.
He admitted four charges of offending public decency and he asked for three similar offences to be taken into consideration.
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