A lifelong sex offender who claimed close monitoring of him was an “intrusion on his lifestyle” has been jailed after being caught in a house with a 14-year-old girl.
Rapist and paedophile John Elvis Clarke, who is considered to be a high risk to women, boy and girls, was jailed for 12 months at Dundee Sheriff Court.
The 63-year-old serial sex attacker was found in a house in the city with the teenage girl after her unwitting parents invited him to stay over.
The court was told the couple had only met Clarke a few weeks earlier when his dog ran into their garden and they began chatting in a friendly manner.
Clarke, a prisoner at Perth, admitted breaching the terms of a Sexual Offences Prevention Order which had been imposed at Cambridge Crown Court on 27 October 2016.
He admitted defying the order not to stay anywhere overnight with anyone under 16 by staying in the family’s home with the 14-year-old girl present between 4 and 23 August last year.
Shock confession
The fiscal depute said Clarke had a long list of previous convictions – mainly for sexual offending – which spanned more than 40 years.
The court heard Clarke met the family by chance at the start of August 2022 when he entered their garden to retrieve his runaway pet dog.
He struck up an immediate friendship with a man who lived in the house, which led to them walking their dogs and going to the pub together, before he was invited to stay overnight.
The prosecutor said the family were completely unaware of Clarke’s background until he admitted to them he “had been done with a rape 20 years ago.”
The court was told he had stayed in a different part of the house from the child and the parents reported they had no concerns about his behaviour.
Solicitor Theo Finlay, defending, said: “His last conviction for sexual offending was in 2006, albeit it was a serious matter resulting in a substantial period of imprisonment.
“Thereafter, since 2013 he has come into consistent difficulty with regulatory matters and breaches of the SOPO which has been in place for some time.
“It’s clear there’s a certain resentment on his part because he considers at times that the conditions and active supervision of the order is an intrusion on his otherwise law-abiding lifestyle. He is quite entrenched in his views.”
Jail time backdated
Mr Finlay said: “He moved to Dundee in 2018 and it was three or four years before he got into difficulty. His position is that his initial contact with this family was entirely accidental.
“There was no deliberate attempt to befriend the family because there was a 14-year-old daughter in the house. It was the result of a chance meeting.”
Sheriff Jillian Martin-Brown jailed Clarke for 12 months, but backdated the sentence to 24 August 2022, when he was first remanded in custody.
Clarke has convictions for indecent assault on a 13-year-old girl in 1979, a 13-year-old boy in 1984, and for five indecent assaults and gross indecency in 1996.
He was convicted for a sex attack on a 15-year-old boy in 1999 and for raping an adult female in March 2007.
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