Dangerous sex offender banned from leaving home at night or talking to women for five years

Police Scotland this week succeeded in a legal bid to have Robert Dills banned from being on the streets between 10pm and 6am and interacting with prostitutes, then boasted - "protecting the public is our top priority."

Wheelchair-bound Dills was last year placed on the Sex Offenders' Register for 10 years and jailed for masturbating in public.

He has also been arrested several times for his conduct towards women, from making silent calls to following them and threatening them.

And he is now only allowed out of his house during the next five years in daylight - unless there is an emergency which puts him in danger.

He is also banned from approaching or contacting lone females or women he knows to be prostitutes.

The limits on his freedom came in to play this week after he lost a civil case brought by Police Scotland at Paisley Sheriff Court.

Dills, 58, was branded "disgusting" and "despicable" by a sheriff when he was jailed for pleasuring himself in front of unsuspecting members of the public last year.

This week a Sexual Offences Prevention Order, brought by Police Scotland under Section 104 and 112 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, was granted by Sheriff Robert Fife.

The order states that Dills is "prohibited" from leaving his home address "except in the event of an emergency which requires his departure therefrom, due to there being an immediate threat to his life or person, between 10pm and 6am the following day."

It also prevents him from "speaking or communicating with any person he knows to be a prostitute... apart from unavoidable or incidental contact."

Expenses were also awarded against him during the hearing - which means he should have to foot the bill for the legal costs incurred by Police Scotland to have his freedoms limited.

But it's believed the police will never get the money as Dills is on benefits and is currently behind bars over claims he breached another Sexual Offences Prevention Order earlier this year.

Last year Dills, of Paisley, Renfrewshire, denied repeatedly performing sex acts on himself and tried to blaming it on his Parkinson's Disease.

He claimed, through his solicitors, that he'd been having hand tremors in his lap on the three occasions people thought they'd seen him pleasuring himself.

But he was convicted following a trial and was caged for 12 months.

And just a month after he was jailed he was back among society due to good behaviour rules and his sentence being backdated to when he was first remanded in custody.

Once released he was arrested by police after allegedly following a woman and terrorising her and her friend late at night.

He denied pursuing Simone Lemos De Moraes through the streets of Paisley then banging on a window and door - placing her and friend Jaceline Suarez in a state of fear and alarm, on November 15 last year.

He was also accused of banging on the windows and door of a property in the town's Walker Street, leaving De Moraes and Suarez scared.

But Dills walked free when Crown Office prosecutors dropped the case - because the women disappeared.

One of the women went to London, the other fled to Spain, and neither could be tracked down.

A Crown Office spokesman said at the time: "It is the duty of the Crown to keep cases under review and, after full and careful consideration of the facts and circumstances of the case, including the available admissible evidence, the Procurator Fiscal decided not to call the case.”

After they succeeded in their bid to have Dills' freedom limited this week, a Police Scotland spokeswoman said: “Protecting the public is our top priority.

“We work in partnership with a number of agencies through Multi Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) to ensure that all Registered Sex Offenders are robustly managed within the community using a range of measures to proactively manage offenders including surveillance, electronic tagging, curfews and civil orders which impose conditions on offenders such as who they can contact, where they can go and access and use of the internet.

“MAPPA partners manage the risk posed by offenders who have come through the judicial and criminal justice system, who are required to comply with the notification requirements placed on them by the Sexual Offences Act 2003."