A paedophile was caught ordering a teenage girl to perform vile sex acts in a video call just months after being release from prison for almost identical offences.
Ethan Rich was found to have targeted the 14-year-old in 2023, with police finding recordings of him masturbating while encouraging her to perform actions on herself on a phone he was not supposed to have.
On the device officers found the sex offender had signed up to multiple social media sites, including WhatsApp, Telegram and Snapchat, using the name of American painter Bob Ross as a pseudonym.
The discovery was made just five months after he was released from prison for almost identical offences which saw him target a 15-year-old girl, something for which he was jailed for three years in 2020.
Locking him behind bars again last week at Swansea Crown Court, Judge Paul Thomas KC said it was clear Rich had ‘learned nothing – or at least nothing positive’ from his time in prison.
While on remand for the most recent offences, Rich’s lawyer said he has been learning French in the hopes of joining the French Foreign Legion when he’s released.
But that will be more than half a decade away, after he was given a 12-year-and-nine-month extended sentence comprising nine years and nine months in custody followed by a three-year extended licence period.
Swansea Crown Court was told that Rich was originally sentenced to three years in prison for child sexual offences involving a 15-year-old girl in August 2020, WalesOnline reports.
Hannah George, prosecuting, said the offending involved the defendant recording video calls with the child during which he got his victim to perform sex acts on herself with him giving her instructions and telling her to ‘moan’ while doing it.
As part of that 2020 sentence he was made the subject of a sexual harm prevention order with conditions including having to register the ownership of phones and a ban on having social media and chat website accounts in names which had not been approved by the police.
The court heard the Carmarthenshire man was released from prison on licence in November 2021 but within two months had been recalled back to custody because of concerns about his contact with females on social media and messaging apps ‘for sexual purposes’. He was assessed as having ‘a high level of sexual preoccupation’.
The prosecutor said Rich was released again in May 2023 but when police went to his home in August to carry out a routine visit they found he had an unregistered phone in the caravan he was living in behind his mother’s house.
Police were also made aware he had been staying at an address in Cellan, Ceredigion, without notifying the authorities.
The court heard at this time Rich was working as a shepherd for a woman he had met in a pub.
It later emerged that though he had disclosed his previous conviction for arson to his new employer he had not disclosed his sexual convictions.
In October police received intelligence that Rich had been communicating with a 14-year-old girl and officers went to arrest him.
The defendant’s phone was seized and while officers were arresting him they heard another mobile vibrating.
Police asked him if he had another mobile and he said he had not but officers found the unregistered phone under his seat.
An examination of the phones found Rich had accounts on a number of platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Snapchat in a variety of names including Bob Ross.
They also found a number of recordings of video calls with a 14-year-old girl during which Rich encouraged the child to perform sex acts on herself and during which he masturbated in front of her.
The prosecutor said the new offending was ‘strikingly similar’ to that which saw him jailed in 2020.
Ethan Rich, of Cwmann, Carmarthenshire, had previously pleaded guilty to a total of 17 offences of failing to comply with sex offender registrations requirements, breaching a sexual harm prevention order, causing a child to engage in sexual activity, engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child, sexual communications with a child, and possession of indecent images when he appeared in the dock for sentencing.
He has 12 previous convictions for 18 offences including arson, causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child, and making indecent images of a child.
Georgia Donohue, for Rich, said it was accepted a prison sentence was inevitable in the case.
She said in 2021 defendant was diagnosed with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and said ‘his autism has left him struggling to form relationships’.
She said in her conference with the defendant he had told her he did not know why he committed the offences and was remorseful for the ‘social scrutiny’ his family had come under as a result of his offending.
The barrister said Rich hopes to join the Foreign Legion upon his release from prison and to that end had started learning French while being held on remand in prison.
Judge Paul Thomas KC said ‘almost immediately’ upon his release from prison the defendant had returned to sexual offending and deliberately flouting the sexual harm prevention order.
He told Rich it was clear that despite the great efforts being put in by the criminal justice system to get him to change his ways ‘you have learned nothing – or at least nothing positive’.
The judge said he was mindful of the defendant’s mental health issues – issues ‘no doubt exacerbated by drug use’ – but in the light of everything he had read about Rich he was satisfied he posed a substantial risk of serious harm to young girls and should be given a sentence as a dangerous offender.
Rich was given a 12-year-and-nine-month extended sentence comprising nine years and nine months in custody followed by a three-year extended licence period.
The defendant can apply for release after serving two-thirds of the custodial element of the sentence but it will be up to the Parole Board to decide if he is safe to be released.
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