A MERSEYSIDE sex offender, for whom funding for assessment and treatment was provided after a high-profile protest, has been placed on probation for three years.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that it was feared that unless 23-year-old Jonathan Davies received specialist treatment, his offending would increase in seriousness.

In April Judge Marshall Evans, QC, was told that the full bill for treatment at a specialist sex offenders' clinic was met only for people on parole. The Home Office would pay 75 per cent, with the balance having to be met by other bodies, such as the probation service, who had no funds.

Davies's barrister on that occasion, Arthur Gibson, said that if necessary the Home Secretary Jack Straw would be summonsed to court to explain the policy.

On May 5, following reports in the press, Mr Gibson told the judge that funding was now available for the £2,000, four-week assessment and a 12-month treatment course, at a cost of £800 a week, to be funded by the Home Office and the Probation Service.

Judge Marshall Evans said last week that it was plain from the report on Davies from the Wolvercote Clinic in Epsom, Surrey, where he had spent the past four weeks, that the work being undertaken may be having the desired effect.

His behaviour had been becoming more aggressive and more dangerous to the public, and it was necessary to see if that behaviour could be stopped. Prison sentences had not, so far, achieved anything, he said.

He told Davies that he had been dealt with leniently in January when put on probation for three years for outraging public decency, but only eight days later he committed the first of the offences which had brought him back to the courts.

"Either this sort of misbehaviour is stopped through the intervention of medical and psychiatric resources or you are going to spend most of your life in prison," said Judge Marshall Evans.

The new three-year probation order requires Davies to spend the next year at the Wolvercote Clinic with considerable restrictions on his liberty. The remaining two years must be spent at an address approved by his probation officer.

Davies, formerly of Edith Road, Wallasey, who pleaded guilty to indecent assault and indecent exposure, was also ordered to register under the Sex Offender's Act.

Mr Robert Jones, prosecuting, said that on January 19, Davies, who has convictions for sex offences dating back to 1992, masturbated in front of a female railway worker at a Liverpool station. Six weeks later he committed a similar offence at a Wirral college in front of a female lecturer. At the time Davies was on probation for outraging public decency and common assault at two local girls' schools, he said.

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