A university graduate flew off to Sierra Leone just weeks after he was put on the sex offender register – requiring him to check foreign travel with his supervising police officer.

International development consultant Yusef Salehi-Esfahani, 35, said he’d told his probation officer about the five week work trip, but hadn’t realised he needed to inform Thames Valley Police.

When he was interviewed in November 2019, after returning from his trip abroad, he told police officers about a series of other breaches of his sexual harm prevention order and notification requirements.

They included buying a new smartphone after his previous one, a Samsung Galaxy phone about which the police were also unaware, was lost during his stint in Africa.

On Thursday afternoon, Oxford Crown Court heard that Salehi-Esfahani was placed on the sex offenders register in September 2019, when he admitted possession of indecent and prohibited images of children.

A sexual harm prevention order limiting his access to the internet and requiring him to tell social services about any children with whom he was in contact was imposed on October 3, when he was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment suspended for two years.

In a basis of plea read to the court on Thursday, Salehi-Esfahani said the breaches of the notification requirements and the court order were ‘unwitting and not deliberate’. He suffered from mental health problems, had not understood the full requirements of the orders at the time but, after his interview with the police, had not got into any further trouble.

Judge Nigel Daly accepted Salehi-Esfahani’s basis of plea, sentencing him to a two year community order with 55 rehabilitation activity requirement days and a month-long curfew. He was fined £10 for breaching the 12 month suspended sentence imposed in October 2019.

“When people breach suspended sentences, they normally go to prison,” the judge said.

“But something has gone seriously wrong at the start of this, at the start of the notification and at the start of the sexual harm prevention order and once it was absolutely clear to you from November 14 – as I say, that is November 14, 2019 – the orders have worked perfectly well and, I hope, will continue to do so until the 10 year period is complete.”

Earlier, Judge Daly told Salehi-Esfahani: “Clearly, you [were] unaware of what you were required to do but you are an intelligent man, a very intelligent man – first class degree from the ‘other’ university - worked hard since, and then this comes up.

“You have still got a very good future in front of you. This was stupid behaviour, stupid behaviour shortly after the orders were made and since very shortly after the orders were made you’ve not done anything wrong again. You’ve not breached them again.”

Yusef Salehi-Esfahani outside Oxford Crown Court

Yusef Salehi-Esfahani outside Oxford Crown Court

Mitigating, Kellie Enever said there had been ‘no explanation’ from the police or the Crown Prosecution Service why it had taken two-and-a-half years to bring the matter to court.

He had made ‘full admissions’ in his November 2019 interview and ‘incredibly’ admitted to other breaches of the order. She said: “The realities are it was a gift, with the greatest of respect, and yet this man does not come before the courts until 2021.”

Ms Enever described the offending as a ‘blip’, for which he was paying the price ‘again’. He struggled to find work, securing the equivalent of three to seven weeks’ worth of international development work a year since his convictions in 2019.

Salehi-Esfahani, of Leopold Street, Oxford, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to breaching his sexual harm prevention order and sex offender register notification requirements.

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