Peter Rowell – Gloucestershire

A former BBC and ITV presenter jailed for a series of indecent assaults on schoolgirls is back behind bars after he was caught breaching his sex offender notification requirements.

Paedophile Peter Rowell, 67, was locked up for six years and ordered to register as a sex offender at Bristol Crown Court in 2012 for a catalogue of sexual offences.

His latest offences were committed when he was living in a flat on Hereford Road in Abergavenny.

The defendant was sent to prison for 29 weeks at Newport Magistrates’ Court this month after he pleaded guilty to two counts of breaching sex offender notification requirements.

Rowell committed the offences in Pontypridd between November 1, last year and March 26.

He had failed to tell police of an address where he had stayed for more than 12 hours where an under 18-year-old stayed with or without an adult and failed to tell police of an address where he had stayed for seven days or longer.

Magistrates heard that the defendant has a “flagrant disregard for court orders”.

When Rowell was jailed 14 years ago, he confessed to taking indecent photographs of children and the possession of more than 400 images.

The father-of-one, from Wickwar, South Gloucestershire, pleaded guilty to 12 counts of indecent assault after complaints from five women.

The incidents occurred between 1989 and the early 1990s when the women were under 16.

He also admitted six counts of making an indecent photograph of a child.

Rowell, who was a well-known face in the West Country, was arrested on April 1, 2011.

He triggered a police hunt when he was reported missing in March that year after failing to turn up to present his regular afternoon programme.

His car was discovered left in a supermarket car park in Yate. He was later found in Keswick, Cumbria.

Rowell, originally from Sunderland, presented the Afternoon Show on BBC Radio Bristol and BBC Somerset – a mixture of music and celebrity interviews.

He was also a news bulletin reader on ITV West for more than 10 years and worked as a DJ for commercial radio station GWR in the 1980s.

Jailing him in 2012, Judge David Ticehurst told Rowell that he had a good career, a good income and a family but behind that he hid a dark secret.

“You had a life and lifestyle that would have been the envy of many – an apparently successful career in a glamorous and glittering world,” he said.

“Behind that public image you were a man that hid a dark secret. You were attracted to young girls, sexually abusing and exploiting for your own gratification.

“You were someone prepared to use the world of showbiz to attract young girls to you to abuse them.

“It is not a case of you involving yourself with a star-struck teenager on an isolated occasion and succumbing to temptation but a series of offences involving five separate girls over a period of five years.”

The judge added: “These girls made contact with you as a minor celebrity.

“You invited them to visit your studio and they believed they were getting an insight into the media world.

“In truth it was enabling you to sexually abuse them.”