Blackpool paedophile, 46, jailed over secret phone and Snapchat account after ex-boyfriend called police

A Blackpool paedophile has been jailed for using a secret mobile phone to access internet chatrooms.

Stuart Mallon admitted breaching terms of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) designed to prevent him accessing children online.

The 46-year-old pleaded guilty at Preston Crown Court to failing to tell police he had acquired a mobile phone and had opened an account on Snapchat, in breach of notification requirements for offenders on the Sex Offenders Register.

Recorder Ayesha Siddiqi sent him to prison for a total of 16 months and ordered the confiscation of three phones discovered at his home.

Mallon, of Trafalgar Road, Blackpool, was said in court to have an attraction to adolescent young men.

He was arrested after an ex-boyfriend reported him to police. The man alleged he had shown him a phone which had not been registered with the police under the conditions of an order imposed on him by a judge at Preston two years ago.

This week the court was told that he had been made the subject of the SHPO in July 2024 after being convicted of three offences of making indecent photographs of a child and engaging in sexual communication with a child.

At the same time he was made to sign the Sex Offenders’ Register which required him to notify authorities of any devices he had and any social media accounts he used.

On May 23 this year a partner of Mallon contacted police to say he had shown him a conversation he had had on the instant messaging app Snapchat which is prohibited for convicted sex offenders because of its facility to delete messages without trace.

The man said he believed the conversation had been with a child and he also said the phone used by Mallon was not one registered with the police.

As a result, officers visited Mallon at his home and asked him about his use of Snapchat. He told them: “I haven’t been on Snapchat for years.”

He was arrested and while the police waited for transport to take him to the station he appeared to be getting anxious. One officer noticed him playing with his hands behind his back while he sat on his bed.

They ordered him to put his hands out front where they could see them and he replied: “Sorry, I was just scratching my a**e.”

They found two phone charger cables plugged into a socket in the wall, but they were not connected to any devices. He then informed the officers there was an additional phone in the kitchen which belonged to a friend and which he was trying to repair.

The police found another phone under the bed below where he had been sitting. It was fully charged and had the Snapchat app open at the time.

When the phone was examined it was discovered that the Snapchat account had been opened from the same number as a phone he had registered with the authorities. The app had last been used the day before his arrest and was traced back to his home address.

Neither the account’s name nor its “vanity name” had been registered with police.

Mallon told officers he and the man who informed police had been in a secret relationship and had two phones so they could privately keep in touch with each other. He denied the phone found under the bed was his.

The court was told Mallon had previous convictions for child sex offences dating back to 2008. He had served a four-year prison sentence for breaching a court order in 2013.

The prosecution argued Mallon knew about the restriction on Snapchat and the requirement to notify the authorities of any devices and social media accounts he held.

He had attempted to prevent police from finding the phone under his bed. “He was given opportunities to tell the police of the device,” said the prosecution. “His failure to do so was due to his knowledge that they were prohibited and he was in breach.”

Barrister Julie Taylor, for Mallon, said her client had had private counselling since his last conviction and had been working to help other inmates during his time on remand in prison.

She argued that while the phone had not been registered with police and neither had his use of a social media app, the device had not been used to make any contact with young boys.

She said that according to a pre-sentence report from the probation service: “Here is a man who, when you look at his history, clearly has a problem. He has an attraction to adolescent young men. He accepts that.”

She said the case stemmed from a “fall-out between him and his boyfriend”. And she added that the man’s claims to police that Mallon had been communication with a child on the unregistered phone had been “an assumption which was wrong”.

Recorder Ayesha Siddiqi said no further action had been taken by police about the ex-boyfriend’s allegations because they could not be substantiated.

She told Mallon his denials about the phone and his use of Snapchat had been a “deliberate attempt to conceal your use”.

“I can’t say that this amounts to a very serious breach or a persistent one. (But) it was deliberate.

“You have a history of this (offending). There may not be a victim here – no individual was impacted by your actions - but there are victims when you behave in this way.”

The judge added this was not his first breach of sexual orders and she decided only an immediate custodial sentence was inevitable.