Oxford sex offender jailed again as Facebook account found

Joshua De Banks, who was first convicted in 2019 for swapping sexually explicit messages with a teen boy, appeared at Oxford Crown Court on Tuesday (April 16) charged with three counts of breaching a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO).

It was discovered that the 25-year-old, who was released from a two-year prison term for similar breaches in January this year, had a second unapproved Facebook account and had altered a safety app installed on his phone by police.

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The defendant, who was using an approved alias on Facebook called ‘Zack Fields’ after an application to amend his SHPO was approved in 2022, said he had made a second account as he was locked out of the first.

The approved alias Facebook account (Image: Facebook)

Sentencing De Banks to 16 months imprisonment, Judge Michael Gledhill said: “You got away pretty lightly on this occasion.

“If you carry on like this you will spend the rest of your life in prison. You’ve got to get your act together.”

De Banks, formerly of Field Avenue, Oxford, was first made subject to SHPO in 2019 after asking a 15-year-old boy to engage in sex acts.

The victim was ‘so traumatised’ he later took an overdose of paracetamol.

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In May 2022, he received a two-year jail term for multiple breaches of the SHPO by using library computers and using a friend’s phone to access WhatsApp and his emails.

De Banks had also acquired a smartphone, which was eventually found beneath his oven, that he had not registered with police.

In September 2022, he applied to amend the SHPO so he could use an alias – Zack Fields – which the courts and police approved.

Upon his release in January, he was handed his phone back with the safety software installed.

However, within a few weeks, De Banks’s mother reported to police the second Facebook account.

The third breach was using his phone after the software had been altered.

Defending De Banks, now of Hughendon Road, High Wycombe, barrister Henry Dickson said upon his client’s release he was in Newcastle and homeless.

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He returned to ‘alcohol abuse’ before the breaches occurred.

He said: “He accepts entirely that this is his responsibility.

“Whatever the circumstances, how sad or difficult they may be, he accepts he has failed to comply with the order.”

It was added that De Banks, who has been on suicide watch in prison, does not know how the safety software was altered.