A DEFROCKED Church of England priest was declared a dangerous sex offender as he was jailed for four years.

Paul Clifford Battersby, 72, appeared before a judge for evading police monitoring and for his fourth set of offences involving indecent images of children.

Battersby worked in various church roles in the north including as priest at St Peter’s Church in Darwen and later part-time vicar at St Mark's in Blackburn.

Lucy Brown, prosecuting at York Crown Court, said some of the youngsters pictured in the images were as young as two years old.

Battersby had used computer wiping software to remove evidence of his online activities despite being banned from doing so under a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO).

“You say you want to change,” Judge Simon Hickey told Battersby. “I find that difficult to accept given your deeply embedded behaviour.

“You deliberately flout any court order and attempts to rehabilitate yourself.”

Declaring him a dangerous offender, the judge said: “I am quite satisfied you will go on to commit serious harm by the commission of further specified offences.”

Strengthening restrictions on Battersby, the judge ordered him to co-operate if police wanted him to take a lie detector test in future.

Twice-married Battersby, formerly of Blackburn and most recently of Spencer Walk, Skipton, pleaded guilty to three offences of having indecent images of children and one each of having extreme pornography, having prohibited images of children and breaching a sexual harm prevention order.

During a previous court appearance in 2017, it was heard how Battersby had been found with a shoebox full of children’s clothing and had even written a fantasy about child abuse.

He held his face in his hands as he was given a seven-year prison sentence of four years imprisonment plus three years’ extended prison licence. For the rest of his life, he will be on the sex offenders’ register, barred from working or volunteering with children and vulnerable adults, and subject to a sexual harm prevention order.

The Church of England expelled him after his first sexual conviction. He had been a parish priest in Lancashire and at one point a principal officer in the Blackburn Diocese Board of Social Responsibility.

His barrister Helen Chapman said: “There is little that can really be said on his behaviour as mitigation.”

Ms Brown said police made a monitoring visit to Battersby’s home on October 6, 2020.

Equipment was found with 201 different images of the worst kind of child abuse, 83 of the middle category and 319 of the least serious category. There were 205 prohibited images, nine extreme videos and 13 extreme pictures.