A CHILD rapist who escaped from an open prison - sparking a massive police manhunt across Gwent and a major campaign by residents - was jailed for a further six months.

Robert Neil Stokes, 35, pictured, escaped from Prescoed Open Prison, Usk, on October 6. Police issued a major alert, prompting the early closure of every school in Newport, and 21 in Monmouthshire.

Stokes, from the Abergavenny area, had been serving a nine-year sentence for raping a 15-year-old boy and had been moved to the open prison with a number of other sex offenders as part of a controversial Home Office policy.

Newport crown court heard that Stokes was found by a member of staff the following day, just a few miles from the prison, after he had fallen down a ravine and broken his ankle.

The court was told Stokes was in line to be considered for early release by August 2005, prior to the escape.

He had pleaded guilty to escaping from Prescoed at an earlier hearing, and is currently being held in Parc Prison, Bridgend.

Prosecutor Siobhan Blake told the court Stokes was moved to Prescoed on October 5. The following day, Ms Blake said, staff found an amount of contraband cash and drugs, believed to be heroin, in Stokes' cell.

"He was expressing fear he would be moved back to a high security prison," she said.

The court heard staff discovered Stokes was missing at around 8.30pm. Robert Buckland, for Stokes, called his escape "a comedy of errors".

He said the amounts of cash and drugs were small, and added that Stokes made the decision to escape "in anger", because a request to visit his mother's grave in Blackwood was refused. The court heard he intended to make his own way there.

"He fell down a ravine where he remained for some hours. He was there for the best part of a day before being found at the side of the road by a driver who happened to be a member of staff," he said.

Pleading for "leniency" for Stokes, who was four years into his sentence, Mr Buckland said: "The public can be reassured in this case, this wasn't a man who had been wrongly transferred to an open prison - he would not have been there if the authorities did not think it was appropriate."

He added: "Another term will not assist the process of rehabilitation. He does deserve hope of something better."

Describing the escape as a matter of "grave concern" to the public, Judge Neil Bidder sentenced Stokes to a further six months jail.

A prison service spokesperson said the decision on where Stokes would serve the rest of his sentence was "a matter for the allocations unit at HMP Parc".