January 2010

Sexual offences order was breached

WITHIN five weeks of being given a 50-week suspended prison sentence for downloading indecent images of children, 37-year-old Robert Langley twice breached a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) which banned him from being in the company of a child under 18 unless in the presence of a parent or guardian.

The breaches, which Langley admitted, led to him being jailed at Truro Crown Court last week for six months, and Judge Christopher Elwen also ordered him to serve consecutively 40 weeks of the suspended sentence.

The 51 days he had spent at HMP Exeter on remand will count towards the total.

Langley, of East Charles Street, Camborne, was originally sentenced on October 9 after his former wife found indecent images on her computer. It was after their split, but she was providing him with accommodation at Twelveheads, near Truro, at the time.

Prosecutor, Robert Linford, revealed that on November 13 Langley was asked by a woman he knew to sort out a problem with her fireplace. They bought alcohol, he became drunk and at some point he knocked himself out by banging his head against a post on the landing.

The woman, who did not know of his past, put him into a spare bed which was in a room occupied by her 17-year-old daughter.

The next day he took the woman’s 11-year-old son to a pub to play pool, again in clear breach of the order, but it was not suggested he had laid hands on the boy .

Mr Linford added that Langley had previous convictions, beginning in 1992, for sexually related offences.

Defending, Barrie van den Berg said Langley had been uncomfortable about telling people of his past following considerable publicity in October because his former wife had contacted the police.

He had been drunk at the time of the first breach of the order when the mother had been in the next bedroom, and there had been other people present in the pub. When challenged he had admitted what he considered to be lack of judgement.

“They were acts of stupidity,” said Mr van den Berg.

The judge ordered that the SOPO should run its 10-year course and Langley must continue to register as a sex offender for ten years.