A PAEDOPHILE has appeared before Bradford Crown Court for illegally installing a software cleaning App on his phone to wipe its internet memory.

Stephen Pollitt, 58, breached a Sexual Harm Prevention Order in a matter of days by failing to tell the police he had bought the Samsung Galaxy S5 and then putting the App on it, prosecutor Paul Nicholson said on Wednesday.

Pollitt, formerly of Steeton, but now living in Lashmere, Cranleigh, Surrey, pleaded guilty to twice breaching the order last month by possessing a phone that was not registered with West Yorkshire Police and wiping the memory from it.

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The court heard that Pollitt had a conviction dating from 2010 for sexual assault of a girl under 13. He was jailed and put on the sex offender register for life.

On March 4 this year, Pollitt was sentenced to a three year community order at Bradford Crown Court for four offences of making indecent photographs of children.

A sexual harm prevention order was put in place until further order.

The court heard in mitigation that Pollitt told his probation officer he had bought the phone. He mistakenly thought he only had to register it with the police if he changed his phone number.

It was a second hand phone and a warning flashed up that there was a virus, and advised him to download the cleaning software App.

“There’s no cloak and dagger here, it was purely accidental on his part,” the court was told.

But Judge Jonathan Rose did not accept that, telling Pollitt: “You have significant paedophilic tendencies and you don’t accept that you have a sexual interest in children.”

He told Pollitt: “If you get a mobile phone, you have to report it to the police so its use can be monitored.”

The judge made a fresh three-year community order, warning Pollitt to “comply 110 per cent” with it.