A SERIAL sex offender deported from Australia who went on to commit similar crimes in the UK and Republic of Ireland is back behind bars after winning a place to study at a top university – without telling the police.

Ryan Thomas “disappeared” off the radar after leaving his home in Blackwood to move into student accommodation in London while a fresher at Imperial College.

As a registered sex offender he had to make sure the authorities knew where he was living and had to tell them if he had a new address.

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Described as “a very bright man” the defendant kept Gwent Police in the dark about his plans and they had no idea where he was for “several days” before officers managed to track him down in the British capital.

Thomas had been deported from Australia in 2015 for sexual assault and indecent exposure.

A few months later he exposed himself during the early hours of the morning to a female student who was walking home on Mill Lane in Cardiff from her part-time job at a bar.

She picked him out during an identity parade but Thomas fled the country and was eventually arrested by the Garda on Lower O’Connell Street in Dublin.

He was jailed for sexual assault and drug-related offences in the Republic of Ireland and served a prison sentence for the earlier offence committed in Cardiff.

Thomas’ latest offences were committed in recent months.

The defendant, 30, of St David’s Avenue, Woodfieldside, Pontllanfraith, pleaded guilty to three counts of failing to comply with sex offender notification requirements.

The other two counts related to him opening new accounts with the HSBC and Halifax banks without informing the police.

Jeffrey Jones, representing Thomas, said of his client: “He has brought this problem upon himself.

“The defendant has lost what he has worked two years for, a place at a prestigious university where he was allowed to study and he regrets that bitterly.”

Judge Lucy Crowther told Thomas: “You did, it seems, on the telephone on September 20 this year tell the police that you were going to go to college but what you didn’t tell them is which college you were going to, what you were studying and where you could be found.

“You were in breach of your obligations.”

She added: “You were living in university accommodation and you had effectively disappeared.

“This was a deliberate failure to comply with not just one but three requirements.”

Thomas was jailed for 10 months.