A pervert who once performed a sex act in front of three children flouted a court order banning him from parks in the city.

Roger Thomas Scott, 45, returned to Chances Park in Morton, Carlisle, despite having been spotted there by an off-duty police officer, in defiance of a court order that bans him from parks, playgrounds, or swimming pools.

The city’s crown court heard how in 2016 he had been prosecuted for an offence in another city park which he committed in view of three 15-year-old girls.

His latest two offences - which he admitted - were committed on February 24, said prosecutor Gerard Rogerson.

When the off-duty officer spotted him, smelling of alcohol, she challenged him and asked him why he was in park.

“He told her he was on his way to the shops,” said Mr Rogerson.

Despite getting that warning, Scott, of Partridge Place, off Wigton Road, repeated the offence by walking through the park on his way home.

Mr Rogerson said the two offences also put Scott in breach of his earlier suspended 21-month suspended jail term.

David Wales, for Scott, described the two breaches of the defendant’s Sexual Harm Prevention Order as a “stupid oversight”.

“He was looking for vegetables for a meal he was cooking for himself and his girlfriend,” said the lawyer.

“He’d been to the shops in the vicinity of his home and found nothing, and he was going to the other side of the park.”

Mr Wales said Scott was not a man who did not care about the court order.

He had simply been absent-minded and foolish.

He had openly told police about his second walk through the park on his return journey.

The earlier offence - in front of the three girls - was in Hammonds Pond, Upperby.

Judge James Adkin jailed Scott for 17 months.

The judge told the defendant: “Your antecedents demonstrate you are an individual who has committed serious sexual offences before.

“You have a proclivity to expose yourself to children, and did do so in a park in May 2017.”

He added that the latest offence had been a deliberate breach of his court order.