‘Sinister’ paedophile watched children play and offered them doughnuts after moving into new neighbourhood

Daniel Sloan had served a three-year jail term for attempting to incite a girl under 13 to engage in sexual activity before he moved into a different area, where nobody knew about his sickening past.

As a result of the conviction, the 35-year-old is subject to a lifelong Sexual Harm Prevention Order, which bans him having any contact with children, although he has already breached it twice.

Newcastle Crown Court heard at the start of this year Sloan moved into a flat in Hebburn, and his behaviour towards children was so concerning that one worried parent carried out a Google search on his name and exposed his shocking past.

When police were called to Sloan's home, he "no longer felt safe in his property as the neighbours had found out he had served a prison sentence".

When officers, who had been informed about what Sloan had been doing, tried to detain him, he resisted arrest and had to be restrained and handcuffed.

Sloan, of no fixed address, admitted two charges of breach of a sexual harm prevention order and resisting arrest.

Mr Recorder Tom Moran sentenced him to 32 months and told him: "The risk you pose is very high."

The judge said a number of children lived around the area that Sloan moved into and told him: "You knew very well you were not to have anything to do with them."

The judge said it was not "innocent or fleeting" contact but "clearly much more sinister than that" and that the conversations Sloan engaged the children in were deliberately "intriguing" to them.

The judge told him: "The only conclusion is you are unable to control your sexual attraction to children."

The court heard Sloan had been initially noticed "watching children playing" then seen chatting to two young girls.

Prosecutor David Robinson-Young said the mum of one of the girls questioned her daughter about the conversation and the child said Sloan was "just beingreally kind, showing us all his double joints and offering us doughnuts".

The child told her mum Sloan had told them he had double-jointed arms, legs, shoulders and could "go cock-eyed".

She also said Sloan had held a ruler up high so that another young girl would jump up for it.

Mr Robinson-Young said as a result of what she was told, the worried mum ran a Google search on Sloan, whose name she was told by her daughter, and found out the shocking truth about his past.

She said in a victim statement she felt "sick to the stomach" when she found out the information about Sloan, who also has a previous conviction for twoindecent assaults from 2005, and feels anxious about him returning to the area.

The court heard the mum showed the information she found to another parent, who had seen Sloan watching and chatting to his little girl as she played.

Sloan had given that young girl a box of doughnuts, with a promise to buy her more, without asking permission from her parents and asked her if she could do gymnastics during conversations.

That girl's dad said in a victim statement his daughter has dreams about Sloan "coming back to get me", cries in her sleep and now knows what a paedophile is.

The dad said: "He has ruined her innocence."

Jamie Adams, defending, said Sloan is a "disadvantaged man with personality difficulties" but has "intelligence and understanding".

Mr Adams said Sloan had felt he was doing well in the new accommodation and added: "Any acts of kindness, as he may see it, may be regarded with great suspicion and fear."