Sex offender who targets children campaigning to be chemically castrated, court hears

Ashley Colville, 31, formerly from Peterlee, has briefed his defence team to push the Prison Service to speed up his castration using drugs.

He was previously top of of the list, his defence barrister Shada Mellor told Teesside Crown Court.

Colville has five convictions for 17 offences relating to child sex and breaches of court orders.

Prosecutor Tom Mitchell said that a woman police officer monitoring his behaviour after his release from prison found that he had an illegal mobile phone from which 350 messages had been deleted.

Technical experts discovered that he had been in touch with a person claiming to be the mother of a girl who she sexually abused as they messaged.

Police were unable to trace the named woman despite a nationwide hunt, said Mr Mitchell.

Judge Jonathan Carroll dismissed Colville’s claim that it was a fantasy, saying that he was convinced that Colville believed that he was in touch with a “like-minded” woman who was sexually abusing her child.

Miss Mellor said that Colville, who appeared over a videolink from Durham Prison, had been in custody for 27 months after having been re-called for breaching his licence which would not count towards his new sentence.

She added:”He is willing to engage in chemical castration.

“He says that is because he does not want to spend the remainder of his life in and out of prison.

“He is fighting for this assistance. He asked those instructing me to campaign on his behalf to find out which prisons are able to offer him the medication.

“He was top of the list but for various reasons including the epidemic he ceased to be so.”

The judge told him: “In my judgment you believed that you were talking to an adult female and that she had a a female child and that she was engaging in sexual abusing that child

“Over a number of hours you engaged in quite repugnant conversations with her , a form of conversation that is shocking to any right-minded person.”

In September 2010 Colville pleaded guilty to the sexual assault of a 16 year old girl in a shop, and in January 2014 he pleaded guilty to 11 offences of possessing indecent photographs of children

In April 2015 he pleaded guilty to breaching a Sexual Harm Prevention Order when he had a phone which he had not declared. He was jailed for five years for inciting a girl for sex

He was jailed for 54 months in July 2018 for breaching a Sexual Harm Prevention Order by attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child

In November 2020 a woman with four children including a 14 year old girl received a Friendship request from him on Facebook. The police officer visited his home on 16 November 2020

Colville, formerly of Cotswold place, Peterlee and later the Nelson Street Bail Hostel in South Bank, Middlesbrough, was sentenced to 10 years with six years custody and four years on extended licence after he pleaded guilty to two breaches of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order and was convicted of arranging or facilitating a child sex offence

The SHPO will last for life and he must register as a sex offender for for life

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