(Image: North Yorkshire Police)
A paedophile who took a "tick box" approach to his community-based sentence is today behind bars.
Sean McVeigh, 54, was given a suspended six-month prison sentence at York Crown Court last year for online child sexual abuse offences.
It included requirements that he complete 30 days’ rehabilitative activities and an alcohol treatment programme.
Kelly Clarke, prosecuting for the probation service, confirmed that he had done both requirements.
But the probation officers supervising him believed it to be "false compliance" and there were no signs that he had actually taken steps to reduce his offending behaviour and therefore his risk to others.
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He had missed two supervision appointments which were also part of the sentence claiming he was ill without producing any supporting evidence and the probation service believed he was "disengaging" from his sentence, she said
On the second occasion, he had claimed he had fallen ill on the way to the appointment, but when the probation officer rang him "he didn’t sound unwell and sounded as if he was in the pub," said the prosecution barrister.
McVeigh told the officer he had had two beers.
Judge Simon Hickey told McVeigh he had taken a "tick box" approach to his sentence.
The judge had adjourned a previous hearing of the case so McVeigh could get a lawyer but the sex offender had told his mother, who was seriously ill, that the judge had fined him and he had persuaded her to give him the money for the "£200 fine".
"You are entirely looking after yourself. You are completely selfish," he said.
McVeigh, of Harrogate, pleaded guilty to breaching the suspended prison sentence by not attending the supervision appointments in January and August and was ordered to serve four of the six months previously suspended.
Defence barrister Nathan Davis said McVeigh had shown "high compliance" and not "wilful non-compliance".
He had reduced his drinking to only four days a week.
The first non-attendance had been when his mental health had suffered as a result of him losing his job.
He had then got a new job and when he lost that shortly before his second non-attendance his mental health had suffered again.
He now had an offer of a job with a firm supplying health and safety training.