A MAN’S ban on having sexual relationships without telling the police first has been reduced to two years.

North Yorkshire Police applied for the amendment to the sexual risk order against John Kevin O’Neill after reading the latest Court of Appeal judgement on court orders restricting sexual behaviour. The order had been for an indefinite length.

Oliver Thorne, for the police, told York Crown Court removing the indefinite length would enable the court to review the order to see if it should be continued.

The police can apply to renew it before it expires in September next year.

Along with restrictions on his use of the internet and telephones, Mr O’Neill, who the court heard practises sado-masochist sex, must tell police 24-hours before he has sex so that officers can discuss his sexual behaviour with his potential partner.

Mr O’Neill, 47, of no fixed address, who was acquitted of rape at a retrial in 2015, had appealed to the court for the order made by district judge Adrian Lower last September to be lifted entirely.

“They (the police) are looking for a way to get a conviction through the back door for rape,” he said.

At the end of Mr O’Neill’s retrial, Judge Simon Bourne-Arton said: “Although this man has been acquitted, it is my judgement he is a very dangerous individual.”

His words led to police applying for the sexual risk order.

Mr O’Neill claimed the order was “incredibly intrusive” into his life, had made him a “pariah” and unemployable, and that people regarded him as a “potential rapist”.

But Judge Andrew Stubbs QC, sitting with two magistrates, said the order had to continue to prevent Mr O’Neill harming others through sexual acts.

They heard evidence from a doctor that Mr O’Neill had told her at her surgery, that he had burned and injured partners during sex, and had, on more than one occasion, choked a partner until they blacked out.

A psychiatric nurse told the court Mr O’Neill had said he was increasingly violent towards sexual partners.

Mr O’Neill denied saying the words and denied being a rapist.

The judge said he and the magistrates were sure that the acts Mr O’Neill had spoken about had happened and that he was therefore such a risk to partners that he had to be monitored by the police.