A MAN who targets teenage girls was today spared jail, despite a judge branding him a "sex pest".

Colin Moffat, 32, was given a three-year community order, plus a supervision order, following an incident in Albert Park, Abingdon, on June 25 as Judge Thomas Corrie said he was being given one last chance.

Police said there were 16 flashing incidents in the park between April 2006 and last June.

Jonathan Stone, prosecuting, told Judge Corrie at Oxford Crown Court that Moffat, formerly of Alexander Close, Abingdon, followed three 15-year-old girls into the park and stood in the bushes, smiling at them with his trousers around his ankles, performing an indecent act. Mr Stone said: "The girls were shocked."

Shiraz Aziz, defending, said Moffat, who now lives in Tenby, South Wales, suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder linked to events while serving in the Army in Bosnia and had a "sense of remorse and empathy for his victims".

Moffat, who has a number of previous convictions dating back to 1995, and who admitted one charge of indecent exposure, broke down in the dock as Judge Corrie sentenced him.

Moffat has already been on a sex offenders treatment programme, but will be sent on it again. He will also be placed on the sex offenders' register for five years.

The judge told him: "You have a long and terrible record as a sex pest. So far every conceivable sentence has been tried, both custodial and non-custodial."