Christopher Brown 36

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A convicted sex offender told police they would find his CV on a seized memory stick – before coming clean and explaining it contained sick child sex abuse images, a court heard.

Christopher Brown, 34, was also found to have flouted the terms of his sex offender notification requirements by spending the night in an – adult – woman’s bed, spending more than 12 hours living away from his registered home.

When police contacted the woman at the start of this year, she was unaware that the man with whom she had been sleeping was a three-times convicted sex offender. She had been seeing the man since October 2021. 

 Brown claimed to have been confused about what he could do under the terms of his notification requirements. He even produced a ‘schedule’ for detectives, trying as best he could to list the times and dates he had been at the woman’s home.

Prosecutor Alex Radley told Oxford Crown Court that during a first search of his home, Brown initially suggested that his curriculum vitae would be found on a memory stick that had not been registered with police.

Later, he confessed: “I’ll be honest. My CV isn’t on the memory stick. There’s stuff there I shouldn’t have.”

The defendant’s devices were analysed and, in total, he had 804 images and videos in the worst category, 252 in category B and 43 category C videos. He had three ‘extreme’ pornographic videos.

Brown, of South Street, Banbury, admitted possession of indecent images and breaching sex offender notification requirements.

The court heard he was first put on the sex offender register in 2016, when he was given a suspended sentence for indecent exposure. The 10 week sentence was later activated after he failed to comply with the court order.

He had since been convicted of having indecent images of children and breach of a sexual harm prevention order. 

A probation officer, going through her pre-sentence report with the judge in court, said she was recommending an immediate prison sentence – to the slight surprise of the judge.

Brown had been given a number of previous chances to comply with the probation service, she said.

Mitigating, Gordana Austin said her client recognised his offences had been committed when he was ‘on his own, lonely’. From living on his own, he had moved back in with his parents.

He was said to have previously worked as a chef then cycled through agency jobs before being taken on as a handyman on constructions sites – a job that he enjoyed.

Recorder Paul Reid jailed the defendant for a total of two years.