A convicted sex offender caught on hotel lobby CCTV with two children was spared an immediate jail term.

Alan Thompson was found guilty last month of breaching his sexual harm prevention order by being in the company of a girl whose mother was unaware of the 56-year-old’s conviction for sexual offending.

He had been captured on CCTV riding his mobility scooter through the hotel lobby where he was then staying, followed by a teenage girl and her boyfriend.

The boy’s parents knew of Thompson’s previous conviction – but the girl’s mother told jurors she was unaware of his past.

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On Friday (March 10), Judge Ian Pringle KC imposed six months’ imprisonment suspended for a year and a half, with a requirement to complete up to 25 rehabilitation sessions with the probation service.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Thompson, of Long Wittenham, rode from courtroom one on a scooter bearing a personalised numberplate-style sign that read ‘PANTHER’.

Despite Thompson’s claims to the contrary, the girl’s mother told the trial in February that she had no idea that he was a registered sex offender.

Cross-examined on Monday, it was put to the woman that she had replied to Thompson’s confession of his past offending: “Okay, thanks for telling me, we’ll leave it in the past where it belongs.”

She maintained she ‘didn’t know nothing about his background’.