British police are trying to trace a Dublin family which may have innocently housed a serial sex offender.
Detectives in Hampshire Constabulary's paedophile unit say they have "serious concerns" about what may have happened when convicted paedophile Stephen Thrower stayed in the city for three months.
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Thrower: jailed last Friday
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"We are concerned that he may have re-offended while he stayed in Dublin between September and November 2000. It's crucial that we track down this family as soon as possible," Detective constable Steve Norcross said.
Thrower - said by a judge to have an addiction to young boys - was jailed for five years last week after admitting three offences of failing to comply with the Sex Offenders Register.
The breaches of the order were committed after Thrower was released from prison on licence in March 1997.
He had served four years of a nine year sentence after being convicted of offences against young boys at the Old Bailey.
Subject to Britain’s Sex Offenders Act, he registered at his local police station in Basingstoke, Hampshire, and a year later he joined a local tennis and squash club. Using a false name he became a volunteer helper and coach with the junior club which involved contact with boys between eight and 14 years of age.
Concerned members of the club alerted police and an investigation began. Thrower was traced to a guest house near Swansea where he had been staying without informing officers in Hampshire.
It also came to light that he had been to France with an eight-year-old boy and the boy's mother.
Thrower was arrested, released on bail and later arrested again - the night before he was due to answer charges in court - at Hollyhead ferry terminal with a one-way ticket to Dublin.
In his car, police found a laptop computer which held 404 indecent still images of children and 38 moving images.
Thrower also pleaded guilty to one charge of taking an indecent photograph, one of making an indecent photograph and six specimen charges of possessing indecent photos of a child.
The judge ordered Thrower should not in future contact or associate with children under the age of 16 or take up any paid or unpaid work which would bring him into contact with children.
Sentencing Thrower at Winchester Crown Court last Friday, Judge Paul Darlow said: "The activities I have heard about demonstrate to me that you have been, and remain, a danger to pre-adolescent boys."
Anyone with information should contact the Paedophile Unit urgently on 0044 845 045 45 45