A sex offender whose sick abuse left a five-year-old girl with a venereal disease has been jailed for going missing when he was released from prison.

Jason McDonagh, 36, should have notified the police about where he was living after he was released from his 10 year jail sentence last year. 

But instead he ‘disappeared off the radar’, sleeping rough for several months - including near a play area in Headington.

McDonagh then spent more than five months refusing to speak, leaving it to a jury to find him ‘mute of malice’ and then find him guilty of breaching his sex offender registration notification requirements.

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Jailing him for two-and-a-half years at Oxford Crown Court on Wednesday (February 15), Judge Nigel Daly told the defendant: “You disappeared off the radar, sleeping rough and making it extremely difficult for the authorities to track you.

"And, when they caught up with you, you made every effort to avoid identification.”

He said McDonagh had made ‘determined attempts to avoid detection’ and described him as a ‘potential threat to children’. 

The defendant was originally jailed for 10 years, after a jury found him guilty of molesting two girls - aged eight and five. The girls were the daughters of a woman with whom McDonagh had struck up a friendship.

On Wednesday, jurors were told that the younger of the sisters was found to have contracted the sexually transmitted infection chlamydia. “Presumably from him,” prosecutor Edmund Blackman said.

McDonagh served almost all of his 10 year jail sentence behind bars; he had been released halfway through the term, as is customary, but was recalled on licence. 

He was finally released early last year, but failed to register where he was living with the police - as is required of sex offenders.

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The Metropolitan Police, who were responsible for managing him as his last known address was in London, reported him to be at large.

After reports of a man rough-sleeping in an alleyway by Bury Knowle Park, Headington, police officers checked on him last July. The man, who it later emerged was McDonagh, refused to give his name and instead said he could be called ‘a*****le’. 

He was eventually admitted to a psychiatric ward at Littlemore hospital, identified as the sex offender wanted by the police, and arrested on September 1.

McDonagh, of no fixed address, said nothing in his own defence. In his sentencing remarks, Judge Daly said a psychiatrist instructed to compile a report on whether he was fit to plead noted the defendant suffered from a mixed personality disorder. 

He remains a sex offender for life.