A PERVERT spent 40 minutes watching children swimming at a leisure centre, a court heard.

Lee Simon Beal, 42, parked his car facing the large window of the Selby Leisure Centre’s swimming pool during half term, said Andrea Parnham, prosecuting.

When the centre manager went to investigate why he had been sitting there for 40 minutes, Beal covered his lap with a cloth, she added.

Beal, 42, also had 73 female contacts on a Facebook profile he set up under a false name and had not told police about two mobile phones.

York Crown Court heard he was on the sex offenders’ register and subject to a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) following his 2017 conviction for outraging public decency by performing a sexual act while sitting in a car in a children’s play area.

“The activity you were carrying out and your attitude to the (SHPO) order at that stage is sufficiently concerning that the custodial threshold has been passed in this case,” said Judge Andrew Stubbs QC.

But he suspended the 20-month prison sentence for two years.

The judge also ordered Beal to do 20 days’ rehabilitative activities and 140 hours’ unpaid work. He extended Beal’s time on the sex offenders’ register until April 2029.

The SHPO remains in force.

Beal, of Ebor Court, Selby, pleaded guilty to breaching the SHPO by loitering in an area frequented by children on February 16, 2018, at Selby Leisure Centre, breaching the SHPO by secretly buying a mobile phone on February 1, 2018, and breaching the sex offenders’ register by not telling police about another phone found on September 12, 2018, which he used to set up the Facebook profile.

For him, Shaun Smith said he had had the September phone before he was sentenced in 2017 and didn’t want to get rid of it because it contained legal photos of sentimental importance.

Beal had secured work and accommodation that would help him keep on the right side of the law, but he needed help in dealing with his criminal tendencies.