YORK’S top judge has warned about what a sex offender may do next after hearing about his perverted fantasies and online sexual chats.

Mark Christopher Johnson, 52, lied that he had not been continuing a decade of downloading and viewing children being sexually abused when he appeared before York Crown Court last year.

Michael Bosomworth, prosecuting, said in reality, not only had Johnson been doing exactly that but he had also been having “disgusting conversations” with other men and had been sharing “perverted fantasies” about abusing children.

The Recorder of York, Judge Sean Morris, said: “It causes great concern whether that is going to move into action.”

He jailed Johnson for another two and a half years.

Johnson, of Queen Anne’s Road, Clifton, pleaded guilty to three charges of having indecent images of children, one of having prohibited images of children and two breaches of a lifelong sexual harm prevention order (SHPO). The 52-year-old was already on the sex offenders’ register for life.

In July 2020, he was jailed for 10 months breaching his SHPO three times, the third time he had been convicted of evading police checks. The judge said on that occasion, Johnson had told his barrister to tell the court there were no images of children on his internet devices.

Mr Bosomworth said since then, police found that the devices contained 14 videos of the most serious kind of sexual images of children, 20 videos and nine photos of the next category and one video and 40 photographs of the least serious category.

They also found that Johnson had evaded police checks by deleting the browser history of his phone and the app he had used to hold the “disgusting conversations”,

Andrew Semple, defending, said Johnson was a single man living an isolated life. He hadn’t appreciated deleting the app breached his SHPO.

It was the fifth time in a decade Johnson had been convicted of having indecent images since 2010. He was jailed for 10 months in 2010, 12 months in 2015 and five years in 2016 for having indecent images of children. In 2015 and 2016 the sentence was also for breaching his SHPO.