A PAEDOPHILE who stalked children with a Paparazzi-style camera was jailed for a year today.

John Fennell, 51, flouted a sex offences prevention order by taking the photos and also by downloading child porn images to his computer, Gloucester Crown Court was told.

Jailing Fennell, Recorder Kevin de Haan QC said parents and children would have been appalled if they had realised he was taking the pictures for sexual gratification.

Fennell, of 'At Last', Yorkley, pleaded guilty to five offences of breaching a sex offenders prevention order by taking images of children under 18 without their parents consent. He also admitted one charge of having indecent photos of children in his possession and one of making an indecent image of a child.

Fennell had received the prevention order in 2007 when he admitted that he kept a secret videotape of children being abused.

At the time he was attending a sex offender's course which he had been sentenced to undergo in 2004 when he admitted two offences of indecently assaulting a nine-year-old girl and one of taking indecent photographs of her.

The girl's family were in court to hear Recorder de Haan jail Fennell and impose a new five- year sexual offences prevention order. He also ordered the confiscation of computer equipment and two long lenses. Her grandmother said the victim was still suffering.

She said: "I am very pleased that he has finally gone to prison but we wish it was for longer. He will probably be out after six months but they will keep a close eye on him and if he does anything wrong, he will be straight back inside."

Steve Young, defending, said the probation service had no alternatives to prison to suggest and Fennell accepted 'with disappointment' that he would now have to serve a jail term, which would be his first. Jailing Fennell for a total of 12 months the Recorder told him "You have effectively been stalking children, which is extremely serious.

"Parents would be mortified – and so would the children if they had that insight – to know that their privacy had been invaded in this way."