Hartlepool sex offender jailed at Teesside Crown Court after deleting WhatsApp messages with woman

David Spencer, 44, from Hartlepool, was sentenced to 10 months in prison at Teesside Crown Court last July after he was convicted of attempting to meet a girl following sexual grooming.

He was put on the sex offenders' register for 10 years and made the subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order which includes a number of conditions to enable police to check on his behaviour.

One condition is not to delete phone messages without permission of an offender manager.

But he admitted deleting a number of mobile phone text and WhatsApp messages between July 19 last year and March 10 of this year.

The court heard they related to messages he exchanged with a woman on the dating site Plenty of Fish.

Kelly Clarke, defending, said Spencer deleted the messages after learning the woman had children under 16 and decided to stop all further commnucations.

Ms Clarke said until the “minor breach” he had been doing well since being released from prison.

"He didn’t delete the app itself, but merely deleted text messages from the app,” she said.

Spencer, of Jackson Street, Hartlepool, who has been recalled to prison until May, admitted two counts of breaching the order.

The Recorder of Middlesbrough, Judge Paul Watson, accepted the messages were probably innocent but said: “Nevertheless I take the view this was a deliberate breach of the order.”

Spencer was given nine weeks imprisonment for the breaches.