Sex offender jailed over use of mobile

JON MACPHERSON

ASEX offender who used ‘incognito’ mode on a mobile phone web browser before trying to blame his partner has been jailed.

Stephen Lewis Hutchinson, from Bacup, was made subject to a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) last year after being caught with extreme pornographic images.

The terms of the SHPO included not using any application on an internet-capable device which ●● Stephen Lewis Hutchinson would prevent the search history from being displayed.

Prosecutor Parker told Stephen Burnley Crown Court that officers from the sex offender unit made a ‘routine compliance’ visit to Hutchinson’s home on Inkerman Street on October 18.

The court heard how Hutchinon’s partner answered the door before handing the officers two mobile phones.

Hutchinson told police that one of the phones, a white Samsung, had been given to his partner the previous day as he acquired a new phone.

Mr Parker said when the Samsung was examined they found an ‘incognito’ internet tab open on Google Chrome.

Police suspected it was the defendant who had been using the phone rather than his partner as suggested and he was arrested, the court heard.

Hutchinson’s partner later provided a statement saying ‘at no point had she used the Google Chrome application or any other app on the phone’ and had only used it to go on Facebook.

Hutchinson, who was previously jailed in 2005 for seven years for attempted rape, pleaded guilty to breaching a sexual harm prevention order.

He was jailed for eight months.

Neil Ronan, defending, asked Judge Sara Dodd to take into account Hutchinon’s early guilty plea and ‘degree of remorse and contrition’.

He told the court that there was no evidence of Hutchinson using incog- nito mode for ‘anything inappropriate or causing harm or distress’.

Mr Ronan said the previous offences were committed at a time when Hutchinson was ‘depressed’ and is now in a ‘loving and stable relationship with mutual support’.

Sentencing, Judge Dodd said: “This is a deliberate breach. The defendant blamed his partner and then put forward a basis of plea to limit his culpability which has been found not to be plausible and he now doesn’t stand by it.”

He tried to blame partner for phone pics