A CONVICTED sex offender who molested a schoolboy in a Bournemouth convenience store has been jailed for 18 months.

Shop assistant Kanapathy Veerasingham admitted sexually assaulting the 15-year-old, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, at the Charminster Road premises on October 23.

At the time of the Bournemouth offence the 53-year-old was the subject of a nine-month suspended prison sentence handed out by Derby Crown Court for a similar offence, involving another young boy.

Prosecuting at Bournemouth Crown Court, Clifford Grier said Veerasingham had sexually abused the Bournemouth boy after he had gone into the shop for an errand for his mother.

“The defendant asked the boy where he was from and put his arm around the back of his neck in a half headlock.”

After pulling his confused victim towards him and being caught on the camera sniffing his skin, Veerasingham sexually assaulted him. The attack ended when another man came into the shop and struck up a conversation with the defendant.

Mr Grier said the tearful boy had confided in his mother who called the police.

Veerasingham was arrested that afternoon but claimed he had only touched him on the shoulder.

In Veerasingham’s defence, the court was told that the Derby offence, which was also committed in a shop, had triggered ‘an enormous scandal’ which had resulted in him having to uproot his family and rely on handouts from friends.

The father-of-two from Cecil Road, Croydon, London, who will be a registered sex offender for ten years, was banned from approaching any child under the age of 16, working with children, entering children’s playgrounds or going within 200 metres of a school.