A convicted child rapist was chatting via Facebook to a girl on the other side of the world.

David King, 58, claimed he hadn’t realised that a court order imposed in 2010 after he was sent down for nine rapes prevented him from speaking to the child, who lives in Thailand.

He said the girl’s mother was present when he had spoken to the child and it would have been ‘extraordinarily stupid’ to groom her.

Sentencing him to 16 months’ imprisonment for breach of the sexual offence prevention order and his sex offender notification requirements at Oxford Crown Court, Judge Maria Lamb said: “I am satisfied not only from the content of what is said in the pre-sentence report but just from common sense that there would have been ample occasions on which the provisions and requirements both of the notification order and the sexual offence prevention order would have been explained to you.

“This was your contact with this little girl in Thailand, not withstanding it may have been in the presence of an adult, a clear breach of the terms of the sexual offence prevention order.

“And these weren’t momentary, they were breaches with some degree of persistence and duration.”

Prosecutor Christopher Pembridge said police officers responsible for managing King visited his home in Didcot on July 5.

They looked at his digital devices, finding a string of Facebook messages with a Thai girl. He claimed he was helping her to learn English and that he wasn’t aware he needed to have the prior consent of the probation service and the police before speaking to her. He had video called her and there were pictures of the child in the thread of messages.

King had also failed to register the details of a new bank card within three days of receiving it, as he was required to do as a sex offender.

The court heard he was jailed for a decade in 2010 at Reading Crown Court for nine rapes. The following year, he was given another five years behind bars for raping a six-year-old girl in the 1970s.

He had been recalled to prison on licence and was due for release in 2025.

Guy Wyatt, mitigating, suggested his client had been ‘naïve’. He had not realised he was meant to register the new bank cards with the police, as they were already aware of the account.

King, of Roebuck Court, Didcot, pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court to breaching his SOPO and his sex offender notification requirements. He remains subject to both orders.

The 16 months' imprisonment will run alongside his current jail sentence.

 

David Kings 2010 custody shot

David King's 2010 custody shot

 

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