A former BBC presenter convicted of sexually abusing teenage girls has been put behind bars again for breaching his sex offender order.
Peter Rowell, 67, who hosted the Afternoon Show on BBC Radio Bristol, was jailed for six years in 2012 for a string of sex offences.
He pleaded guilty to 12 counts of indecent assault on five girls under 16, which took place between 1989 and the early 1990s.
The father-of-one also admitted six counts of making an indecent photograph of a child, after he was found with more than 400 indecent images of children.
He was ordered to sign the sex offenders register, which means he must notify police of any addresses he stays at permanently, regularly or with any children.
But he has been locked up again for breaching the order, by failing to provide officers with these details on multiple occasions.
Newport Magistrates’ Court heard on one occasion, Rowell was wrongfully at a property for more than 12 hours with a child under 18 with or without an adult.
Another time, he travelled 30 miles from his then flat in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, to stay at an address in Pontypridd, South Wales, without informing police.
And on a separate occasion, he failed to tell officers about an address he had stayed at for seven days or longer between November last year and March.
Rowell, of Wickwar, South Gloucestershire, pleaded guilty to two counts of breaching sex offender notification requirements.
He has now been jailed for 29 weeks – more than ten years after his original sexual offences.
The former radio DJ triggered a police hunt when he was reported missing in March 2011 after failing to turn up to present his regular afternoon programme.
His car had been found abandoned in a supermarket car park – but he was located ‘safe and well’ the next day in Keswick, Cumbria.
Prior to his disappearance, police had raided his home and seized his computer, where they found the indecent images. He was later arrested, in April of that year.
Before joining the BBC in 2010, Rowell was a news bulletin reader on ITV West for more than ten years.
He also worked as a DJ for southwest-based regional radio station GWR in the 1980s.
Sentencing Rowell in 2012 at Bristol Crown Court, Judge David Ticehurst said: ‘You had a life and lifestyle that would have been the envy of many – an apparently successful career in a glamorous and glittering world.
‘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.’
He added 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.’
