A PAEDOPHILE failed to tell the mother of two young girls that he was on the sex offenders register before going on a camping trip with them, Swindon magistrates heard.

Robert McKinley swam naked in a lake at Ashton Keynes with one of the children and took off her bra in the water during the break in April last year, prosecutor Vyvyan Thatcher told the court on Wednesday.

The trip meant he was in breach of the register’s requirements that he notify his offender manager that he was staying somewhere with a person under the age of 18.

Mr Thatcher said McKinley, of Brimble Hill, Wroughton, had been a registered sex offender since 2009. Before that he had been known by a different name.

He had been convicted in 2009 of sexual activity with a child and sentenced to a year in prison.

He had met the children’s mother and she had taken some time to get to know him and thought he was good with children.

In April last year they went camping at a site in Ashton Keynes. During the holiday “he swam naked with a child having undone her bra and given her cider.”

When the mother found some of his documents in another name she asked McKinley about them.

“He gave various reasons. Later she decided to Google him and the conviction for the sex offence came up,” he said.

She also found out about the incident in the lake involving her daughter, who was under the age of 13 at the time.

He was interviewed by police in May 2015 and admitted it. “He admitted giving her cider, helping her off with her bra while they swam. He also admitted taking the children on a bike ride without their mother’s knowledge.”

McKinley, 52, pleaded guilty to the breach.

Richard Williams, defending, stressed McKinley faced one charge of failing to notify his offender manager about the trip.

He had driven his camper van to the site and the woman had met him there with her children. It had slipped his mind that he should tell the authorities what he was doing. He was keen to stress he had slept in the caravan and the children had been in a tent.

“Clearly he realises what an incredibly vulnerable position it has put him in,” said Mr Williams. “There have been no difficulties with notification before this incident. He said it was completely inadvertent that he did not notify the police.”

The magistrates asked for a pre-sentence report and adjourned the case until July 8. McKinley was granted bail on the condition that he did not have any unsupervised contact with anyone under the age of 18 unless cleared by his offender manager.