A CONVICTED sex offender who regularly spent the night at the home of a woman who had two young daughters without notifying the police he was doing so has been jailed.
Tristan Hadland appeared at Warwick Crown Court after pleading guilty to failing to comply with the requirements of his registration as a sex offender.
Hadland (41) of Bushberry Avenue, Tile Hill, Coventry, was jailed for ten months and a new order to register as a sex offender for ten years was imposed.
The original order had been imposed at the court in 2016 after he had admitted downloading ‘quite grotesque’ images of children as young as 15 months being sexually abused.
Prosecutor Ian Windridge pointed out that Hadland also had a conviction in 1997 for indecently assaulting a five-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy, for which he had been jailed for 12 months.
Following his release from a 16-month sentence for the 2016 offences, he had to comply with a number of conditions under his sex offender registration.
They included notifying the police of any address where he stays for more than seven days in a 12-month period and of any address at which he spends more than 12 hours where there are children present.
But on August 16 Hadland, who had been jailed for four weeks in 2017 for breaching another of the conditions, was met by his offender managers and returned to his home with them.
He told them of a lady he referred to as his girlfriend and that he had been staying overnight at her home in Rugby.
And when his phone was inspected the officers found a photograph of her with two young girls.
Hadland denied that she had any children, but enquiries revealed that she did have two daughters aged three and one.
He then admitted he had stayed over on occasions when one of the little girls had been present while the other was at her father’s.
Judge Sylvia de Bertodano, who had sentenced Hadland in 2016 for what she described then as ‘quite grotesque’ images of young children, said although it was not suggested he had done anything to the girl, it was relevant that his earlier indecent assaults had also been on very young children.
Simon Hunka, defending, said: “He is frustrated with himself for the position he’s put himself in. This was a breach, and it was deliberate.
“It was a calculated decision, but his motives were not sinister.”
He pointed out that Hadland’s girlfriend had not been kept in the dark about the 2016 conviction, although she was not told about the older matter.
“If he had kept his hours to under 12, he would have done nothing wrong, and there is no suggestion he acted on those urges he had many years ago.
“The question is whether, given the absence of true harm, Your Honour feels able to suspend the sentence,” Mr Hunka added.
But jailing Hadland, Judge de Bertodano told him: “Your history with courts goes back a long way, and the 1997 offences were in relation to very young children.
“In 2016 you were found in possession of a number of images, and I sentenced you to 16 months. It is very disappointing to me than we meet again in this way.
“You are here for failing to comply with notification requirements. You had a girlfriend and had been staying overnight at her address where she has two young girls.
“It is to your credit you told her at least something about your offending, although you did not tell her about the contact offending.
“These requirements are put in place to keep children away from risk. I accept you did not intend to commit any offences, but I have to look at the risk situation.
“I cannot suspend the sentence, it must be immediate. The message must go out that if people breach these orders, they must go to prison.”
