A MAN who performed a sex act in front of a senior police officer’s daughter has escaped being sent to jail despite having two previous sex convictions.

Hugh White, from Littleworth Park, Littleworth, near Wheatley, exposed himself to the schoolgirl on a U1 bus from Oxford city centre to Wheatley in July 2008.

In 2002, White was convicted of indecent assault after groping a woman in Wheatley High Street.

He also admitted sexual assault in 2006 after grabbing a woman’s bottom in the village’s Asda car park.

Having been convicted of indecent exposure last November in relation to the bus offence, the 48-year-old was sentenced yesterday at Oxford.

Judge Bruce McIntyre gave him a three-year community punishment despite earlier stating: “This was a nasty piece of sexual offending aimed at a young girl, on her own, on her way home at night.”

The incident occurred at about 9.20pm on July 17, 2008, when the girl, who was sitting opposite White and cannot be named for legal reasons, noticed his trousers were undone.

As she stood up to get off the double-decker to be collected by her off-duty policeman father she saw White perform sex act.

Having alerted the driver, the victim made her way to her father’s car and burst into tears.

The off-duty officer then boarded the bus and called for uniformed back-up to arrest White.

During the two-day trial last year, White said his flies had come undone when the bus braked sharply, throwing him off his seat.

He claimed the victim “misinterpreted” his nervous hand-wringing for what she said she saw.

In a transcript of his police interview read to the jury, when told the girl claimed he was performing a sex act, White replied: “In her dreams.”

In a statement read to the trial, the victim’s father, a highly ranked officer in Oxfordshire, said: “When she got in the passenger seat she was so upset she could not tell me what had happened for several seconds.”

White was initially set to be punished in December, but Judge McIntyre deferred sentencing.

Judge McIntyre ordered White to comply with a three-year supervision order.

He also told him to attend a sex-offender group programme and sign the sex offenders’ register for five years.