A registered sex offender from Bradford has been warned to expect a jail sentence if he continues to breach a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO).

Bradford Crown Court heard how Christopher Barratt, now 27, was found to have accessed a cloud-based storage server, giving him the potential to view illegal material on the dark web, just two-and-a-half months after the order was imposed.

He had previously been handed an eight-month suspended sentence in November 2021 for making and possession of indecent images of children.

Prosecutor Adam Walker said his use of the internet was prohibited without informing the police, but his online activity was monitored by a company of behalf of West Yorkshire Police, which detected a number of online breaches.

He was found to have accessed a cloud server at 6.19am on January 28, 2022, and then again on nine occasions in the early hours of the following morning.

Barratt’s laptop was seized by police on February 1, 2022, and on the same day Barratt told police his cloud use had been “an oversight”.

In an interview later Barratt, Toftshaw Lane, Bradford, exercised his right to silence.

Mr Walker said: “This was deliberate activity. The breach created the potential to screen illegal material and thereby create a risk of very serious harm.”

Mr Recorder Anthony Hawks told Barratt that the SHPO had been imposed because of his “perverted interest in looking at sexual images of young children” and rejected his explanation that it had been an oversight.

He added: “The ink was hardly dry on that order when you breached it by installing software … that allowed you to access matters on the dark web.

“You’ve got to understand that you are a registered sex offender.

“I don’t know what was going on in your head and what you wanted to look at, but you are a marked man. You have come very close to going to prison.

“If you persist in this [behaviour], you will go to prison.

“You may think you’re clever and know more about computers, or more technically savvy, than other people but you will be found out. Do you understand?”

He sentenced Barratt to 18 months imprisonment suspended for two years and ordered him to undertake 30 rehabilitation activity requirement days. He was also fined £500 and ordered to pay costs of £150.