A former sex offender was jailed today for failing to meet the terms of his punishment.Carl Reeve, 31, was originally convicted of indecent assault on a girl under 16 in 1997.

A former sex offender was jailed today for failing to meet the terms of his punishment.

Carl Reeve, 31, was originally convicted of indecent assault on a girl under 16 in 1997. But he appeared before North Norfolk magistrates in 2005 for failing to tell police that he had moved and failing to tell them he was going on holiday abroad, as he has to under the terms of the sex offenders' register. He was sentenced then to 170 hours of community punishment for those offences and stealing £300 of CDs.

His spell on the sex offenders' register has now expired, but he has completed just 68 hours of work, and subsequently failed to tell the probation service or police where he was.

At Yarmouth magistrates' court today, Reeve, of Browning Place, King's Lynn, admitted breaching his community punishment order. Ross Burrows, mitigating, said he had trouble carrying out the community punishment because he was working on a travelling fair. But he was now working at a static fair and had a long-term girlfriend with whom he had bought a house and was acting as a father to her son.

“He fears he will lose his job if he serves a term of imprisonment. He fears he will lose his girlfriend. He hasn't told her he was ever in this sort of trouble. It is going to prove difficult for him to tell her. She doesn't know where he is today.”

Jailing him, chairman of the bench Paula Brown said: “We find willing and persistent refusal to complete your community punishment order.”

She sentenced him to three months in prison for the Sex Offenders Act offences and an extra month for the thefts.