August 2023

Abingdon sex offender jail welcomed as ‘great relief’

A convicted sex offender jailed for flouting two court orders thought he was ‘above the law’, police claimed.

Alan Thompson, 56, was jailed for 15 months at Oxford Crown Court last Friday for breaching his sexual harm prevention order by buying an iPad from Curry’s and using the computers at Abingdon library.

As part of his order, Thompson is prohibited from having any unsupervised contact with any child under the age of 18 and using any device capable of accessing the internet.

At the time, the Abingdon man was on a six month suspended prison sentence for a different breach of the court order.

On Friday, Judge Michael Gledhill KC told the repeat offender, who in 2018 was jailed for sex offences against children: “You decided you were above the law and could do exactly what you wanted.”

Now, detectives have described Thompson as a ‘risk to the community’ who was made subject to various court-ordered conditions in order to ensure the public’s safety.