A CHILD sex pest who plied 12-year-old trick-or-treaters with beer after luring them to his house with a lit pumpkin has been jailed.

Steven Lach had not been out of prison long, having been returned to serve most of a ten-year jail term, when he returned to his old 'grooming' ways at Halloween.

Now Lach, 55, who was living at Rodbourne, Swindon, has been jailed for two years and three months after he breached a sexual offences prevention order for a second time.

Tessa Hingston, prosecuting, told Swindon Crown Court that the former limousine driver was housed at the address in Chippenham after his release from prison.

She said five young girls and a boy were out for Halloween when they got to his house and saw a lit pumpkin, a sign for trick or treaters to call, and the front door ajar.

They called out and he came to the door and asked the youngsters, all aged 12 apart from one girl who was 13, if they wanted some beer as he didn't have sweets.

She said the children admitted telling him they were 14 after he asked their ages and he then got the beer from the fridge, opened it and offered it to them.

Lach then asked where they lived and went to school and when he heard one of the girls tell her pal said she needed the toilet he said she could use his, which she declined.

He told them not to tell their mothers about him and, as they walked away, he called two of the girls back saying he did have some sweets.

When they returned he told them they were 'gorgeous' and as they all walked off again he followed them in his car.

"The Crown say he was effectively enticing them to his address by the open door and pumpkin," Miss Hingston said.

When he was questioned he claimed he had not realised their ages, saying he thought the 12-year-old lad was an adult.

He also said he followed them to apologise for giving them beer and denied telling them they were gorgeous, saying he just complimented them on their outfits.

Lach, of Massey Close, Pewsham, Chippenham, pleaded guilty to breaching a sexual offences prevention order.

Alex Daymond, defending, said his client's best piece of mitigation was that he had admitted the charge.

He said that he had only spoken to the children and that he had apologised to them for giving them beer.

Jailing him Judge Peter Blair QC said: "Within a short time of your release from a sentence of imprisonment for breaching the sexual offences prevention order you appear, possibly while you were under the influence of alcohol, to have resumed some of your old pattern of grooming behaviour towards youngsters when they came trick or treating."

Lach was jailed for seven years, with a three-year extended licence, in January 2007 after admitting systematically abusing eight girls, the youngest being 12-years-old.

He bought them drink and cigarettes telling them he was called Glen and ran a photography studio.

Lach took them to his then home on Bruce Street or drove them into the country where he took photos of them for his own sexual gratification.

He also gave them money, carried out sex acts in front of them and simulated sex with them in the pictures.

And when the police became involved he got one of the girls he had abused to write a letter purporting to be from another victim with her fingerprints on it.

He told one of the youngsters he liked sex with girls, not women, as a woman had once broken his heart and the youngest he had slept with was 12 years old.

The court was told he repeatedly denied any wrongdoing claiming the girls had cooked up the whole thing to frame him.

Lach, then living at St Alban’s Close, Rodbourne, eventually pleaded guilty to 18 sex crimes and one charge of perverting the course of justice.

In 2011 he was convicted of breaching the sexual offences prevention order when he approached two 16-year-old girls close to the Melksham hostel he was living in and asking where he could sunbathe naked.