Mark Thornton 60

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Mark Thornton, 60, of Lambley Avenue, Tynemouth, avoided an immediate prison sentence after admitting further breaches of the court orders imposed following child-sex offences.

Newcastle Crown Court heard Thornton was jailed in 2016, made subject to a sexual harm prevention order and required to comply with sex offender notification rules after he was caught by paedophile hunters using a decoy profile while trying to meet a child for sexual activity. The same group later caught him a second time. He has ten previous convictions, including attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity and attempting to meet a child for sexual activity. He has also breached the sexual harm prevention order on four earlier occasions.

On 8 May this year, risk management officers found Facebook, TikTok, Telegram and X on his phone, in breach of the order. On Facebook and TikTok he was using aliases that had not been registered with police, a further breach. Eight days later, police found a tablet computer and a bank card that he had also failed to register as required.

Thornton pleaded guilty to two counts of breaching the sexual harm prevention order and one count of breaching his notification requirements. Judge Michael Robinson said Thornton became irritated when spoken to by probation and complained he was viewed as “once a sex offender always a sex offender”. The judge added that Thornton is assessed as posing a high risk of serious harm to children.

Antonia Adie, defending, said Thornton had forgotten about the tablet and failed to register the bank card, but had registered the account. She said: “It’s not persistent or serious in respect of him going out and buying the devices. There’s no suggestion he committed the substantive offences he did nine or ten years ago.” She added that his last conviction was in 2020 and that he has shown “he is capable of complying with the order and being managed in the community and staying out of trouble”. That period, she said, coincided with him meeting his now 81-year-old civil partner, who is terminally ill.

Judge Robinson said he had intended to send Thornton to prison, but instead imposed 18 months’ imprisonment, suspended for two years, with programme requirements and £150 costs after hearing about the partner’s condition. He told Thornton: “It’s an act of mercy on my part which I do not expect to be thrown back in my face. Stay away from chatrooms and the like, comply with the restrictions and stay out of trouble.”