A VOLATILE repeat child sex offender was jailed for four years for breaching strict controls on his behaviour just weeks after being freed from prison.

Paul Vincent Jones twice swore - once directly at the judge - when he appeared on a live video-link for his case at Teesside Crown Court.

Jones reacted angrily to being described as "a predatory paedophile" and shouted over the video-link at the judge: “Who the f*** do you think you’re talking to, prick?”

Mr Recorder Sandiford ordered his voice to be muted, before again using the description in his sentencing remarks.

In an earlier outburst, he disputed prosecutor Chris Wood's account that he swore at police when they asked for a passcode to his mobile phone.

Mr Wood said Jones threw the Samsung handset onto a table, and said: "Just check the f***ing phone, you f***ing pig."

Jones yelled down the link: "What a load of f***ing sh*t."

Jones was locked up for three years in 2008 after being found guilty of abusing a teenager – and later made sickening threats to "string up" the victim when he was interviewed by a probation officer.

In 2014, he got a 45-month sentence for making indecent images of children and repeatedly breaching a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) imposed during the earlier case to restrict his computer use and contact with under-16s.

He was released last October, but almost immediately began contacting girls aged 14 and 15 using aliases - some of them obscene - on social media sites.

Duncan McReddie, mitigating, said Jones's pre-sentence report was "not the most flattering portrayal" and admitted "occasional volatile responses" when he was being interviewed.

Jones, of Parliament Road, Middlesbrough, admitted three breaches of the SHPO and one of failing to comply with the conditions of the sex offenders' register.

The judge, Recorder Jonathan Sandiford, told him: "I have read the pre-sentence report, and it makes for disturbing reading.

"You minimise your behaviour. You are a predatory paedophile. It is perfectly apparent your sexual interest lies in children, and you have no interest in curbing that behaviour."