A CONVICTED child sex offender has been banned from befriending children after a court heard that he used cream cakes and alcohol to entice youngsters into his flat.

Blackburn magistrates were told that John Parker offered to let children stay in his double bed and encouraged them into his house and to play truant from school to spend the day at his home.

Parker denied the allegations, but the court was told by a sex offender expert that the 63-year-old former brewery worker represented a "very high risk" of re-offending.

Parker, of Blackburn, was made the subject of a sex offender order, applied for on behalf of the Chief Constable of Lancashire. The order prohibits him from associating with people under the age of 18, allowing anyone under 18 into his home and imposes a condition that he cannot change address without the approval of the police.

In his risk assessment, National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children expert Paul Clark said Parker's home was in a triangle of three schools and opposite a nursery. He said Parker had admitted inviting children into his home for over 40 years and described him as very high risk.

Mr Clark added: "People who are sexually interested in children can be quite creative and inventive in the way that they pursue children."

The court heard statements made by numerous children, boys and girls, who attend Our Lady and St John School, Shadsworth. They told how Parker would stand at his window and wave to children as they went to and from school.

He told them of a sign he would make if he had cream cakes for them and several of the children told how they had been into his house, playing cards and drinking alcohol. Some told how he had told them to miss school to come to his home and that he had said they could come and stay in his double bed.

Staff at a day nursery told how they had alerted the police after seeing children going in to Parker's flat during the day, and Detective Constable Martin Kennedy told the court that he had seen Parker beckoning to children as they passed his front window.

Father Joseph O'Carrol, Our Lady and St John's deputy head, said he had been alerted by a concerned parent and had established that a number of pupils had been visiting Parker's flat.

Niamh Noone, representing the Chief Constable, said sex offender orders were an attempt to control sex offenders within the community.

She said: "Sex offenders prey on vulnerable young people within society and the Chief Constable makes this application to provide reassurance to the public."

She said Parker had been put on the sex offender register as a result of a conviction in 1999 for an indecent assault on a 12-year-old boy ten years earlier.

She said the boy and his friends used to go to Parker's home to play cards and drink alcohol. On the day of the offence Parker sent the other boys to the shop to buy cigarettes and then indecently assaulted the youngster.

Ms Noone said the boy, now aged 23, blamed Parker for his decline into a life of drug abuse and crime. He told police of the indecent assault after he had been arrested for assaulting Parker and burgling his home -- an offence for which he subsequently received a three-year jail sentence.

Parker was jailed for four months for the indecent assault, a sentence which was upheld following appeal to a judge sitting at Preston Crown Court.

Paul Schofield, representing Parker, said: "He does accept that his behaviour was inappropriate given his particular background," said Mr Schofield. "But there is no suggestion of any coercion or any improper sexual behaviour.

"He is, it has to be said, a lonely old man who has simply sought to befriend these children in what he thought was a proper way. He has never allowed a child into his home on their own, it has always been in groups or pairs."

Picture: Convicted sex offender John Parker leaving Blackburn Magistrates' Court after being made the subject of a sex offender order