Neill Cuthbertson, 57, had only recently been released from prison when he entered the front garden of a Herne Hill home to spy on a 12-year-old girl and her younger brother. The day before, he approached a man with a four-year-old girl and lingered near the children’s play area at Croydon’s Centrale Shopping Centre. He was sentenced to 32 months in prison for the “very serious and persistent” violations today (December 2) in court. Cuthbertson was released from prison on August 28 after serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence for assaulting a young girl, according to the court. When he was released, he was placed in temporary housing and was subject to strict terms of the order that prohibited him from contacting or going near any children. READ MORE: Police are looking for new suspects after a father was stabbed in the groyne during a carnival. On September 9, around midday, he approached a man he knew in the shopping centre and struck up a conversation with him. Knowing Cuthbertson’s background, the man told him he was with his granddaughter, who was playing on an electronic rocking chair. After leaving, he was seen pausing at the shop’s doorway before returning inside to “linger” for several minutes next to the children’s play area, in violation of his conditions. Later that evening, at 10:58 p.m., he was seen by police officers walking down a residential street before entering the front garden of a property and staring into a window in Herne Hill. The following evening, at 7:53 p.m., he returned to the same property and was apprehended by plainclothes officers who were familiar with his previous offences. He attempted to flee after being noticed but was apprehended and arrested. According to Prosecutor Luke Bowyer: “PC Diamond stated that the items seized included a pair of white gloves and binoculars and that a face print was discovered on the window where he had pressed his face against it during the search. It was obvious that this was a children’s playroom.” In a victim impact statement, the father of the two children stated that they found the incident “incredibly disturbing” and felt “an overwhelming sense of relief” that the defendant had been apprehended by police officers. Cuthbertson was sentenced to five years in prison in 2015 for assaulting an 11-year-old girl while she was watching a magic show in Hamley’s toy store. A similar incident occurred when he groped the buttocks of an eight-year-old girl in the Westfield shopping centre. His criminal history began in October 1992, when he was convicted of disorderly conduct after being discovered in a garden staring into a room with children. He was convicted of four counts of indecent exposure in 1993 after being caught standing on a roof watching a 12-year-old girl in her bedroom. He was sentenced to seven years in prison after breaking into the home of a nine-year-old girl through an open window and touching her vagina over her clothing, causing her to scream. He entered another open window at a Thornton Heath address shortly after his release in 1998 and assaulted another girl. He tried to remove the duvet from her body and touched her thigh before fleeing to another room when she awoke. He returned and resumed his assault after she fell asleep again, but she awoke screaming and he was arrested. He was sentenced to eight years in prison and faces additional charges such as photographing children in changing rooms, entering mixed changing rooms in a leisure centre, messaging a 14-year-old on Facebook, and approaching an eight-year-old girl in a park. Recorder William Featherby KC sentenced him, saying his behaviour was “highly uncomfortable and has sinister echoes of offending in the 1990s,” and that he believed the use of binoculars and gloves were for “sinister purposes.” “I completely reject your excuse that you were being followed; that doesn’t explain why you were at the property twice, and it certainly doesn’t explain why you were pressed against the window,” he said. “I regret I have no confidence that would be the case, and you are too dangerous to be left at large,” he said of the suggestion of a suspended sentence. Cuthbertson, of South Norwood, was sentenced to 32 months in prison, with the previous sexual harm prevention orders remaining in effect for life.