Ryan Watkins (Image: Gwent Police)
Last Updated: 35 seconds ago
A convicted sex offender has been sent to prison for more than two years after police repeatedly caught him with internet-enabled phones he had never declared – including one pushed out of sight behind a wardrobe.
Ryan Watkins, 34, of High Street in Blaina, admitted five breaches of the sexual harm prevention order he has been subject to since 2017. He was handed a total of 27 months behind bars.
Why the order existed
Watkins was convicted in June 2017 of attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity. That conviction brought a 20-month prison term and a sexual harm prevention order running for a decade – a measure intended to give officers oversight of how he uses the internet.
The first visit
Officers arrived at his address without warning on May 28, prosecutor Sarah Grace told the court. Watkins produced a Samsung Galaxy handset for them to check and assured them it was the only device he owned.
Checking the phone, officers spotted an open tab on the Google Play Store showing the listing for WhatsApp – yet no such app was on the handset. Watkins conceded he had removed it, itself a breach of his order.
A second handset
With the phone seized, officers asked how they should get hold of him. Watkins then revealed a second device, another Samsung Galaxy, which he said had recently come back into his possession and which he had been using.
That handset had never been declared to police and carried Snapchat, an app that does not preserve messages. It was seized alongside the first.
Behind the wardrobe
Officers returned on June 9. Once again Watkins insisted he had nothing capable of connecting to the internet. A search of the property followed, and he then admitted a phone was concealed behind a wardrobe.
Snapchat was installed on it, logged into an account police knew nothing about. A story had been posted to that account only 11 hours earlier. Watkins was arrested.
Ms Grace told the court there was nothing to suggest the devices had been used to approach children or vulnerable people.
Previous record
The court heard Watkins had four previous convictions covering nine offences, among them a failure to comply with sex offender register notification requirements. At the time of these latest breaches he was also subject to a suspended sentence handed down in April last year – itself imposed for breaching the same order.
In court
Gareth Williams, for Watkins, told the court: “The defendant is realistic.”
“Ultimately he had to register it with the police and he didn’t.”
Judge Shomon Khan responded: “It doesn’t make any sense. If he’s using it for legitimate purposes, just register it.”
Mr Williams pointed out that no illegal material had been recovered from any of the devices, and characterised the breaches as “unsophisticated”.
“If you didn’t want them to find something, you could find somewhere better than behind the cupboard. And you wouldn’t take them to it.”
Sentencing
Passing sentence, Judge Khan told him: “You have to accept this order is in place.
“The whole purpose of the order was to monitor the way in which you used internet-enabled devices and the way you operate online.
“You repeatedly breached that order.”
The 27-month total includes the activation of six months of the suspended sentence Watkins was already serving in the community.
