Simon Fellowes-Welch 60

Description

A SEX offender has been jailed, after breaching the terms of a court order.

Simon Fellowes-Welch, 55, of Sutton Close, Ryde, who has a long history of child sex offences, breached the terms of a sexual harm prevention order.

The order, made in November 2017, specified that he could not delete any internet browsing history or download file-sharing software, both of which he did, Isle of Wight Crown Court heard.

Prosecutor Graham Gilbert told the court how Fellowes-Welch had a history of breaching court orders and had spent time in prison before for child sex offences, including for indecent images of children.

In February, Fellowes-Welch's laptop was inspected by police and there was no internet history present and a file-sharing programme was found.

For Fellowes-Welch, Oscar Vincent told the court that before the breach, there was 15 months of compliance with the order.

Mr Vincent said that the breach was an innocent mistake, made by trying to improve a slow, out-of-date laptop.

He had run a system clean up programme in order to clear some memory on the laptop, in the hope that it would improve its performance, but in doing so inadvertently deleted his internet browsing history.

He had downloaded the file-sharing software in order to download the clean up programme, Mr Vincent said.

Mr Vincent said that as soon as he had realised his mistake, he told his offender manager, who arranged the police inspection of the laptop.

Fellowes-Welch was sentenced to one year in prison.