A serial sex pest broke a strict court order by deleting text messages from his mobile phone.
Robert Basterfield appeared at Perth Sheriff Court and admitted breaching the terms of his decade-long Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO).
The 51-year-old, once dubbed a danger to all women, was sentenced to two years imprisonment in January after he admitted tormenting a woman in Perth city centre.
However, he was allowed to walk free from court, having already spent the equivalent of a 26-month sentence on remand.
However, Basterfield – who was told be a sheriff to “stop being so creepy” – now faces further jail time for breaching restrictions put in place four years ago, when he became the first person in Britain to be made subject to a SOPO for a second time.
‘Highly dangerous’
The order banned Basterfield from deleting his internet browsing history or “other records of calls, texts, messages of emails,” without the permission of the officer managing his movements in terms of the Sex Offences Act 2003.
Basterfield admitted deleting texts from his mobile on May 31 at his home in St Catherine’s Square, Perth.
He will be sentenced at the city’s sheriff court next month.
Australian-born Basterfield hit the headlines in 2007 as the first man in Britain to be banned from “accosting” lone women under a unique five-year prevention order.
Police branded him “highly dangerous” and claimed he was “capable of using extreme violence”.
But they lost a fight to have him banned from solo contact with the opposite sex for 30 years.
The former taxi driver was twice prosecuted for hounding females in Perthshire and was jailed in 2006 for stalking a rugby club barmaid.
Followed tourist
The order that he breached was put in place at Perth Sheriff Court in April 2019, following a series of incidents that left his victims suffering “fear, alarm and distress.”
The court heard how he followed an Italian tourist, offered to show an explicit photo to a chemist selling him Viagra and sent a picture of his genitals to a virtual stranger.
In 2021, he was back in court for breaching the terms of a Sexual Offenders Prevention Order by sending hand-drawn images of male genitals to two women from his prison cell.
He was sentenced to 13 months imprisonment, but was released later that day having already served time on remand.
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