A CUMBRIAN child sex offender who is classified as “very high risk” has been given tougher restrictions on his online activity.

A Cumbria Constabulary police officer told Carlisle Crown Court that 26-year-old Jonathon Fell had repeatedly lied and shown himself to be manipulative when confronted by attempts to manage the risk he poses in the community.

The defendant, who has lived in Carlisle and Workington, committed his last offences within days of being released from an earlier sentence.

In February 2021, he was jailed for 45 months for various online child sex offences, including causing a child aged under 13 to engage in sexual activity. On several occasions, he used a mobile phone to incite young children into sexual activity.

He had contacted them through various social media platforms.

The officer told Judge Nicholas Barker: “He’s assessed as very high, which means he’s deemed to be immediately at risk of reoffending.”

On the last occasion, [in 2021] within a week of leaving prison, Fell had bought a phone.

Having been released on January 28, he began offending “really, really quickly.”   The officer asked the court to impose three new conditions on Fell’s sexual harm prevention order:

*  A requirement that he must notify the police of any intention he has to buy or obtain a phone or digital devices in advance of acting on this intention.

*  A stipulation that his police offender manager can carry out unannounced spot checks on his devices on 12 occasions every year.

* And a requirement for Fell to submit to lie detector tests, with seven days notice.

Under his present sexual harm prevention order, Fell was allowed to acquire a phone or internet device provided he notified the police within three days of taking possession of it.

During his offending, said the officer, Fell managed to keep an internet device he had secret from the police and the Probation Service.

The officer said: “Mr Fell has on a number of occasions been manipulative and has lied to the police and other agencies. At present, unannounced checks were possibly only if the force had “reasonable grounds.”

The officer accepted the judge’s assessment that Fell’s word could not be trusted unless his claims are independently verified. “Polygraph testing is absolutely essential to be able to manage him,” added the officer.

Jeff Smith, for Fell, said there was no need for the new conditions. Judge Barker approved the first two strands of the application but rejected the request for compulsory polygraph testing.

The advanced notice of Fell acquiring a phone or other internet device would close the three day  “window of opportunity” the defendant would otherwise have.

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Explaining the rejection of lie detector tests, the judge said: “He is not on licence, and it seems to me, looking at all the circumstances, that the police are in possession of sufficient supervisory powers to ensure compliance with this order.”

The judge added if the police find evidence of Fell "persistently lying and manipulating" then the force can reapply to have the polygraph testing imposed.

The defendant has previously lived at Wastwater Avenue, Workington, though more recently he has lived at Lowther Street, Carlisle. He has been told that he will be on the Sex Offenders' Register indefinitely.