A paedophile who once filmed himself trying to rape a child was ‘embarrassed’ about his significant animal pornography collection.

Alan Foster said ‘I’m very sorry’ over the video link from HMP Bullingdon as he was sent down for four years.

Oxford Crown Court heard that 70-year-old Foster had previously been convicted of filming himself trying to rape a child. The video was uncovered when cops raided another paedophile’s secret attic room.

Having travelled to the Philippines, he moved there permanently in 2010. Prosecutor Nick Mather said on Friday: “The motive for him doing so can perhaps be indicated by the [fact the] person with whom he was travelling had been convicted of sexual offences against children.”

He returned to the UK in 2013. By 2014, he was back in trouble with the police – jailed the following year for having child sex abuse images and given an indefinite sexual harm prevention order.

In 2020, he was found to have breached that order by having an Amazon Firestick without first telling the police.

Two years later, during an unannounced visit to his flat, police found he had been searching the net for terms that ‘suggested child sexual offences’.

He told detectives that he had deleted his internet history. “He said he’d been looking at bestiality images. That is why he had deleted his browsing history. That was untrue.”

Indecent and prohibited images of children were recovered from the phone, including five in the most serious category. All the illegal images showed girls.

Police swooped on October 3, when he was again found to have an Amazon Firestick in breach of his sexual harm prevention order. The last image that had been looked at using the internet-enabled Firestick showed a woman having sex with a dog.

Quizzed by detectives, he suggested that the indecent images on the phone could have been there when he bought it from a previous owner. Technical data from the phone showed it had been wiped before Foster bought it.

“It is a substantial aggravating factor that the defendant tried to place the blame for possession of those images on another,” Mr Mather told the court.

Jailing him for four years, Recorder John Hardy KC said: “You have been described by prosecution counsel as a prolific sexual offender. I agree with that description.

“You are a committed paedophile and you are persistent in your offending and the breaches of the sexual harm prevention order display a contempt for the orders of the court.”

Mitigating, Emma Hornby said her client had suffered abuse in his own childhood.

She acknowledged her client’s trip to the Philippines, but said while he was there he was in a long-term relationship with a woman. During the pandemic, tragically she died of coronavirus. Her death had a ‘significant emotional impact’ on the defendant.

He had a ‘significant number’ of bestiality images, about which he was embarrassed.

Foster, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to breaching his sexual harm prevention order and possession of indecent images.

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This story was written by Tom Seaward. He joined the team in 2021 as Oxfordshire's court and crime reporter.  

To get in touch with him email: Tom.Seaward@newsquest.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter: @t_seaward