January 2006 Paedophile ignored police warnings A father-of-three embarked on a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old he met in an internet chatroom, despite police warnings about the hazards of mixing with young girls. Jason Watkin (38) ignored police advice given in November 2003 after he and a friend had been texting another 15-year-old girl. Less than a year later he was chatting to a schoolgirl on the internet. At first she told him she was 16, but her real age soon became clear when he started picking her up from school. He would then take her to a secluded part of Peterborough in his car with blacked-out windows. Yesterday, he collapsed in the dock after he was jailed for two years for admitting the sexual offences. Judge Peter De Mille said about the police warning: “What it should have done was to warn you in the clearest possible terms of the danger that comes from inappropriate friendships.” The girl’s family had sent Watkin packing when he turned up at the family house in October 2004, after teachers tipped them off about their relationship. But he was soon back on the scene, Peterborough Crown Court heard. He showered her with gifts and gave her a mobile phone so they could call each other. Prosecutor Nick Staite said a few months later, a member of a city youth group reported the matter to the police after the girl had been showing a video clip on her phone of Watkin. Watkin even took the girl to meet his children and his 70-year-old mother at his home in Bringhurst, Orton Goldhay, the court heard. Mitigating, Jenni Dempster said that since his arrest in February last year, social services had prevented him from being left alone with his young children. She said: “There can be no doubt this defendant never set out with the intention of commiting any criminal offence. “He’s not a sexual predator who moves from one chatroom to the next searching for victims.” She added that the part-time cleaner looked back on the period he was with her in “utter disbelief”. Judge Peter De Mille jailed Watkin for two years for sexual activity with a girl under 16, two for years inciting a girl under 16 to engage in sexual activity and 12 months for making a child aged between 13 and 17 to watch an image of sexual activity. All sentences are to run concurrently He was also placed on the Sexual Offenders Register and given a Sexual Offenders Provision Order. That order bans him from talking to girls under 16 in internet chatrooms, working with girls aged under 16, or communicating with girls under 16 without supervision.