A convicted sex offender who previously said his 'dream boy' would be 13 used his paedophile rapist pal’s computer to log onto his Microsoft email account, a court heard.
Nicholas Finnemore, 59, also had also downloaded a virtual private network on his iPhone, designed to hide his web activity, in breach of an earlier sexual harm prevention order.
He failed to register a new bank card, posted by his bank in late June, as he should have done as a registered sex offender.
Jailing him for a total of 30 months at Oxford Crown Court on Friday (October 20), Judge Nigel Daly told Finnemore: “Quite simply, you cannot breach orders of the court without getting some sort of serious sanction.”
As part of the two-and-a-half year jail time he activated 12 months of an 18 month suspended prison sentence imposed in 2021.
Finnemore, who was originally convicted in 2017 of sexual communication with what turned out to be so-called paedophile hunters, was initially spared immediate jail time two years ago for having indecent images of children and sending explicit messages to what he thought was a boy called Mark. He also told other perverts that his ‘dream boy’ would be aged 13 or 14.
Prosecuting, Matthew Knight said the offending initially came to light when they visited a ‘known sex offender’ called Laud Lawrence, understood to be the same offender whose life sentence for rape was downgraded to an 18-year prison sentence by the Court of Appeal in 2009.
It emerged that Finnemore had used a computer at Lawrence’s home. The defendant failed to notify the police he was using the machine.
However, Mr Knight accepted that the evidence was he used it on two occasions – in May and July - and only to access his Outlook email account rather than surf the web for vile sexual images of children.
An iPhone seized from his home showed Finnemore had installed a virtual private network on the device, despite having previously wound up in court for having a similar VPN on his computer.
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Finally, in June he failed to notify the police he had been sent a new bank card, as he was required to do as a registered sex offender.
Finnemore, of Centenary Way, Witney, pleaded guilty at earlier court hearings to breaching sex offender notification requirements and a sexual harm prevention order.
The court heard he had managed to complete the Horizon sex offender rehabilitation programme as part of his suspended sentence order, but was only part-way through another probation programme before he was arrested and remanded to prison.
Mitigating, James Hay said his client’s ‘main focus’ was the wellbeing of his elderly aunt, to whom he spoke daily since being remanded in custody.
“She’s a lady in her 90s who has dementia and is struggling to cope day-to-day,” the defence barrister said of Finnemore’s aunt.
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