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Judge issues jail warning after pervert’s stay-over breached sex court order

Ex-civil servant flouted conditions with unnotified ‘nights away’ from home

Yesterday at 14:40

A disgraced former civil servant who downloaded hundreds of sickening images of children being sexually abused has admitted breaching his Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) within hours of it being imposed.

Pervert Andrew McNeill owned up to staying at his cousin’s on June 14 last year “because it was his birthday’’ — but the unpermitted overnight stay had not been planned.

A prosecution lawyer told Ballymena Magistrates Court on Thursday, police then spoke to McNeill’s father who admitted his son only stayed at his designated address “a few nights a week and he wasn’t sure where else he stayed”.

McNeill, from Foxton Wood Avenue in Ballymena, pleaded guilty to breaching the SOPO between March 8 and June 14 last year.

The order, set to last until 2028, was imposed at Antrim Crown Court on March 8 last year along with a three-year probation order after the creep pleaded guilty to 14 charges relating to indecent images of children and four of having extreme pornography between March 2019 and March 2020.

When cops raided McNeill’s home they seized three devices including a mobile phone and two computer towers.

Cyber crime investigators uncovered more than 800 still images along with eight video files, many of them in the worst category.

On Thursday, the court was told McNeill had been “struggling with the ramifications of what happened and the implications that then arose from his convictions”.

“There were occasions when he was particularly low,” said his defence solicitor, conceding that in addition to staying at his cousin’s house without permission, there were other times when he “had gone out walking on beaches and ended up sleeping in his car”.

Turning to McNeill the judge stressed the importance of complying with every aspect of the orders imposed by the court as they were designed to address the risk of reoffending as well as support him.

Imposing a three-month jail sentence but suspending it for three years, DJ Broderick warned the pervert that any further offending would mean he would have to serve that three months.