A convicted sex offender has been jailed after he approached boys in a Huddersfield park offering them pieces of rock from Whitby.
John Wilson, 67, was found guilty by a jury at Leeds Crown Court on two charges of breaching a sexual offences prevention order barring him from befriending or attempting to befriend children under 16.
The order was made in 2010 by a judge at Bradford Crown Court when Wilson, of Gledholt Road, Gledholt, was given a three year community order for an offence of outraging public decency on a bus.
That court heard that Wilson, a piano teacher had made sexual advances to a 12-year-old boy.
In the latest case, Tony Kelbrick prosecuting told the jury on July 30 last year three boys were in Greenhead Park, and noticed Wilson walking past and watching them.
He asked if they liked rock and gave one boy a piece of the pink stick of rock he was holding. The others told him not to eat it and at that stage a witness who had seen what had happened intervened. He was suspicious about Wilson and ushered the boys away and reported the incident to the police.
Wilson denied he had approached the boys saying he intended to give the rock to a busker he had earlier seen playing a guitar and then seen in the park, he claimed before he could do so the boy took the sweet from him.
After the verdicts the jury heard only a few weeks earlier in June last year, a 12-week suspended sentenced was imposed on Wilson for committing an indecent act at Leeds railway station.
Jailing him for 52 weeks for the breaches of the sexual offences prevention order with 12 weeks consecutive from the suspended sentence, Judge Tom Bayliss QC told Wilson it was a blatant disregard of the order: “This was grooming behaviour. There is no excuse for you to have a cupboard full of Whitby rock and be wandering around the park offering it to children, there is no reason other than for your own sexual pleasure.”
