August 2020 York sex offender’s confession saved him from jail A pervert with sex convictions in two countries continued to break the law despite being monitored by North Yorkshire Police. But Philip Whitfield, 55, was spared a return to prison because the main evidence of him continuing to look at indecent pictures of children was his own confession. Andrew Horton, prosecuting, said Whitfield was jailed in the UK in 2003 and given a suspended prison sentence in Finland in 2014 for possessing sexual images of youngsters. On his return to the UK in 2017, North Yorkshire Police got a court order enabling them to monitor his use of the internet. When they searched his York home in July, they discovered he had four mobile phones and other devices capable of accessing the internet that he hadn’t told them about as he was required to do under the sexual harm prevention order. They have yet to analyse the devices to see if he had been using them to view indecent images of children. But he told them he had done so. Whitfield’s barrister Andrew Semple said he accepted he needed help in dealing with his sexual attraction towards children and he wanted help. In the 17 years since he had first been arrested, no court had offered him the chance to have rehabilitative work. There was no suggestion he would physically abuse children himself. “He has lost his home, lost his job,” he said. Whitfield, of Broadstone Way, Clifton Moor, pleaded guilty to four charges of breaching a SHPO. The Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris, gave him a community order with a lengthy rehabilitation programme and 40 days’ rehabilitative activities. He told Whitfield his frankness in acknowledging what he had done, his willingness to be reformed and his guilty plea had saved him from a prison sentence. Mr Horton said police went to Whitfield’s place of work and arrested him on July 30 after they received information that someone at his home address was using the internet to view indecent images of children. Then they searched his house. Whitfield may face a further prosecution once the police finish the months-long process of analysing the contents on his devices. May 2017 York man on sex offenders’ register for overseas offending A sex offender must give North Yorkshire Police his passport details and tell them where he lives for four and a half years because he broke the law in Finland. Philip Whitfield, 51, was convicted of sharing indecent images of children at a Finnish district court in December 2014 and was jailed for five months, Emma Richards, for the police, told York magistrates. Had the court been an English court, he would automatically have been put on the sex offenders’ register for seven years. She asked them to make a sexual notification order, which would have the same effect as putting someone on the sex offenders’ register, and to make a sexual harm prevention order of the kind that is often made against defendants who commit offences in England involving indecent images of children. Whitfield, of Broadstone Way, Rawcliffe, did not oppose the making of either order. The first order means that Whitfield will have to provide the police with the same information as anyone on the sex offenders’ register, including his main address, any other place where he lives, any names he uses, and his passport and bank details. It lasts until December 2021, seven years after his conviction. The second order will enable police to monitor his activities on the internet, because he will have to allow them to inspect his internet devices and see which websites he has been accessing. He will also be forbidden to install software designed to hide his internet activities or wipe his computer records. Magistrates made the second order, as the police requested, for five years until May 2022. Ms Richards said the police wanted both orders because Whitfield could apply to a court to get the sexual harm prevention order lifted. If he succeeded, then police would have no means of monitoring his activities or knowing where he was if there was no sexual notification order in place. She said the equivalent English offence to the Finnish offence would be distributing indecent images of children.