US sex offender given jail sentence at Lisburn Magistrates Court for prevention order breaches
An American software developer has been handed a ten-month jail sentence after he admitted several breaches of his Sexual Offences Prevention Order.
Appearing in the dock at Lisburn Magistrates Court and due to go on trial on Monday (November 17), Matthew O’Hare instead entered guilty pleas to two counts of breaching his SOPO and a further charge of breaching the requirements of the PSNI police Sex Offenders Register.
A fourth charge accusing the 63-year-old of a further SOPO breach, was dismissed by District Judge Rosie Waters due to a lack of evidence. The court heard that O’Hare is a “category one offender” with a SOPO in place until March 2027.
A prosecuting lawyer told the court how first breach relates to a home visit last October when O’Hare’s Designated Risk Manager (DRM) attended his home.
When the DRM examined O’Hare’s phone, the officer noted there were two social media apps which the defendant had not sought permission for.
Moving to events arising from last December, the prosecutor said routine system checks noted that O’Hare had not completed his annual re-notification.
The latest breach, committed on 29 April this year, related to another home visit when O’Hare’s DRM called to “invite” him in for formal interviews.
At that point, after “O’Hare produced two mobile phones for which “he did not have approval for, and nor had he registered the devices.”
In March 2020, web designer O’Hare was ordered to spend three years on probation after he pleaded guilty to a series of offences relating to indecent images of children and sexual communication with a child.
In that original case, O’Hare had faced six charges of possessing indecent images of children, some of which were described in court as Category A on his IBM Thinkpad and Lenovo laptop between February 2008 and early 2017.
He also contacted a child for sexual purposes online using the pseudonym Mr Leatherhead. Within two months of receiving that probation order, however, O’Hare had breached it by assaulting his supervising probation officer.
Revoking that order and replacing it with a one-year sentence, split between three months in jail and nine months on licence, Judge Patrick Lynch KC heard that O’Hare had been subjected to assaults and burnt out of his former home at Monbrief Walk in Lurgan.
“That seems in your mind to have translated into you being a victim rather than a perpetrator of criminal behaviour and your reaction to the people who tried to give assistance is totally reprehensible,” the judge told O’Hare as he jailed him in 2021.
Lodging a plea in mitigation on Monday, O’Hare’s defence counsel suggested that having been given permission for some apps, the 63-year-old believed he had “continuing permission” for others.
By his pleas, O’Hare now accepts that was not the case, said the barrister, conceding that O’Hare was recently dealt with in Belfast for similar offences and further, that he was subject to a suspended sentence at the time.
District Judge Rosie Watters said that in her view, O’Hare “seems to have been ignoring the arms of the order to some extent".
Imposing a five-month sentence for the case in front of her, and activating five-months of the previously suspended sentence, the judge ordered them to be served consecutively.