Hartlepool sex offender jailed for breaching protection order again

David Walls, 42, was made the subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order in 2017 to protect the public after he admitted trying to meet up with a girl he groomed over the internet.

The order included requiring him to make devices capable of accessing the internet available to police and probation officers on request and not to delete his history.

But between last December and January it emerged that he had disposed of his mobile phone without telling officials, meaning his activity on it could not be checked.

Just months earlier, Walls had been released from prison after serving a 16-month jail term for previous breaches.

Outlining the latest offence, prosecutor Richard Bennett said Walls told a probation officer in December he had thrown his phone in the bin because it was broken.

Mr Bennett told Teesside Crown Court: “It’s arguably a very serious breach. The order was in place because of the defendant’s attempted grooming of a child over the internet.”

Walls was jailed in October 2020 for several breaches of the Sexual Harm Prevention Order by setting up accounts on three messaging and dating apps without notifying the police and deleting his internet history.

Emma Williams, mitigating for the new breach, said: “He accepts he should have passed that device on.”

Jailing him for 10 months, Judge Chris Smith said Walls, of Rugby Street, Hartlepool, appeared not to have learned his lesson, adding: "I’m afraid only the locking of the prison cell door, immediate imprisonment, is the right punishment here.”

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