May 2019 Sex offender jailed for touching himself in front of girls travelling on bus EIGHT DAYS after being released from prison A South Yorkshire sex offender had been released from prison for just eight days when he touched himself in front of three 14-year-old girls who were travelling on the same bus as him. After first being jailed for sexual activity with a child in 2014, Kelsey Osbourne was released from a second sentence for breaching a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) on August 17 last year. Just over a week after his release, Osbourne of Doncaster Road, East Dene committed his latest set of sex offences on August 25, while he was a passenger on an X22 bus travelling through Rotherham. Osbourne, 31, went on to the top deck of the bus, and drew the attention of three 14-year-old girls when he directed his phone towards them, as though he was filming them, Sheffield Crown Court heard. “He had his hands down his trousers, and appeared to be masturbating,” Paul O’Shea, prosecuting, told the court. One of the girls described seeing part of his exposed penis. “The girls took a short video, and some photos. Two of the girls decided to confront him…he said he hadn’t done anything and said they were paranoid. When they got home, they told their families and some of the images were uploaded on to Facebook,” added Mr O’Shea. Osbourne subsequently sent a friend request on Snapchat to one of the three girls involved. Shortly after this incident, Osbourne began communicating online with four people who purported to be girls aged between 10 and 14-years-old. The accounts were in fact so-called ‘decoy accounts’ being run by adults seeking to catch sex offenders in the act. Osbourne, of HMP Doncaster, sent sexualised messages; videos of himself masturbating as well as pornography to a number of the ‘girls’ and also attempted to meet them for sex. The court heard how when the ‘girl’ he was communicating with did not comply with his request to video chat or to meet him he would block them, deactivate his Facebook account, before setting up a new account and moving on to another young ‘girl’. Osbourne was arrested by police in September last year, after one of the adults operating the decoy accounts went to South Yorkshire Police. “When he was arrested by the police he acknowledged he was a danger to young girls…he said he needed help,” added Mr O’Shea. Osbourne pleaded guilty to one count of exposure today, and to charges of attempting sexual communication with a child; attempting to cause a child to watch a sexual act and attempting to engage in sexual activity with a child at earlier hearings. He was in breach of a sexual harm prevention order and was still on license when he committed all of the offences. Osbourne had been due to stand trial next week, accused of exposure and engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child, but after he pleaded guilty to the exposure charge, the Crown agreed to offer no evidence on the other matter. Richard Thyne, defending, questioned why Mr O’Shea had opened the case stating the exposure offence Osbourne admitted to involved ‘masturbation’ when they had accepted his not guilty plea to the charge of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child. But Judge Graham Reeds QC said that because both counsel agreed Osbourne had, at least, placed his hand on his penis in front of the three girls, he did not want to get into a discussion about the ‘semantics of masturbation’. Mr Thyne continued his mitigation by saying Osbourne should be given credit for his guilty pleas. Judge Reeds jailed Osbourne for two years; made him the subject of a new sexual harm prevention order and placed him the sex offenders’ register for life.