A Scarborough Paedophile Matthew Dunning, a sex offender from Scarborough, has been sentenced to 12 months in prison for violating a stringent court order intended to limit his interactions with children.
Matthew Dunning, 28, from Scarborough, was mandated to register as a lifelong sex offender in 2016 following his conviction for the sexual abuse of a juvenile girl.
Matthew Dunning, as a registered sex offender, was obligated to notify the police if he resided or temporarily stayed at any residence containing children.
Nevertheless, he violated that order in 2018 and repeated the infraction earlier this year when he was discovered residing with a woman and her children for three weeks.
Matthew Dunning, residing at Pavilion Square, ultimately acknowledged the violation and appeared for sentencing at York Crown Court.
Prosecutor Celine Kart said that Matthew Dunning was supposed to notify police within three days if he was living or staying at a household with children.
The woman with whom he had been staying provided police with a statement confirming he had been staying at her house and that she wasn’t told about his previous convictions for sexual offences, nor about his notification requirements.
In 2016, Matthew Dunning was jailed for three years and eight months and placed on the sex-offenders’ register for two offences of sexual activity with an under-age teen girl in a Ryedale park.
Matthew Dunning had sent text messages to the girl to arrange a meeting and asking her if she would have sex with him.
She told him she didn’t want sex but travelled with a friend to meet him at a park in Thornton-le-Dale, where Matthew Dunning lived at the time.
The friend went for a bike ride and while she was gone, Matthew Dunning had full sex with the girl and got her to perform a sexual act.
Matthew Dunning received the notification requirements as part of his sentence for those offences and was also made subject to a sexual-harm prevention order.
Defence counsel Charlotte Noddings said Matthew Dunning never had any unsupervised contact with the children at the woman’s home, but that the risk was there.
She added that Matthew Dunning, a father-of-three, was an isolated figure who had problems with alcohol and anxiety.
He had worked on building sites but was currently off sick due to alcohol abuse and depression.
Recorder Dapinder Singh KC said that Matthew Dunning had “deliberately concealed” his criminal record from the woman and deliberately breached the order.
He also cited “some concerning comments” in a probation report which stated that Matthew Dunning “lacked awareness and understanding of the consequences of (his) offending” and that he still posed a risk of harm to children.
He told Dunning: “This offending is so serious, and your circumstances are so (serious)…I just cannot see how this sentence could not be an immediate custodial term.”
Dunning was jailed for 12 months but will only serve half of that sentence behind bars before being released on prison licence.
He will remain on the sex-offenders’ register for life.
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