A sex offender has been banned from any contact with children after a Judge heard he spent a night alone in a tent with a nine-year-old girl.
Detectives feared Derek Hornett was grooming the little girl and may have been planning to procure her for two known paedophiles he befriended at a hostel for ex offenders.
Hornett, aged 53, has also been banned from contacting North Devon child abuser Terrence Kelly and Torbay-based Michael White because of fears they may be a danger to children.
The three men met at a post-release half-way house in Teignmouth after all three had been jailed for separate sexual crimes.
Hornett, who also used the name of James Defalco, befriended a family which had young children and introduced the other two without revealing their past offending.
He gained the trust of the parent to such an extent they allowed him to take a nine-year-old girl out alone in his car and to share a tent with her in their garden.
The other men gained access to a boy from the same family and one of them went on to see the child naked while giving him a shower.
Terrence Kelly, aged 60, from Ilfracombe, has already been banned from having contact with the other two men by a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) made at Exeter Crown Court last month.
Hornett was made subject to a similar order by Judge Francis Gilbert, QC at the same court and his SOPO was also extended to prohibit unsupervised access to any child under 16.
He is now required to tell the parent or guardian of any child he meets about his criminal background, which includes a caution and a conviction for unlawful sexual intercourse.
Hornett, from Whitestone, near Exeter, was jailed last year for breaking another clause in his SOPO which forbade any contact with people over 60.
He has a previous conviction dating from 2005 for causing grievous bodily harm to an 82-year-old woman who became HIV positive after he befriended her in Torbay. On that occasion he was jailed for three years and three months.
Hornett opposed the extension of the order but Judge Gilbert agreed it was necessary after reading a report from a police public protection officer.
It said there was intelligence which raised concerns about his contact with children going back to the 1970s culminating with his alleged grooming of a nine-year-old girl last year.
He also introduced Kelly and White to the family where they gained access to other children.
Mr James Taghdissian, prosecuting, said:"There were safeguarding concerns he was grooming and at worst procuring children to be abused by two other people who he knew to have criminal interests in sexual activity with children."
Miss Ceylan Bayram, defending, said Hornett's only conviction involving a child dated back to the 1980s and there was no recent evidence against him.
Judge Gilbert ruled the SOPO should be extended. He said:"The police view is that he was grooming a female child, having established himself in a position of trust with her family.
"It is clear that contact was wholly inappropriate and he introduced the two other registered sex offenders to the family. They both had convictions against children and were both subject to SOPOs.
"The police report says Hornett demonstrates a risk and a preventative strategy is necessary to prevent him identifying further potential victims. I entirely agree with the police's concerns.
"These restrictions to not prevent him living a completely honest and decent life provided he stays away from children."
Kelly, aged 60, formerly of Market Street, Ilfracombe, and White, aged 55, from Torquay, were both jailed for two years in July 2013 for breaching Sexual Offenders Prevention Orders.
Kelly was a registered sex offender because he was jailed for a year at Exeter Crown Court in 2010 for sexually assaulting three boys aged 12 or 13 when he was living in Market Street, Ilfracombe.
White was jailed for four years in 2008 for having sex with a 15-year-old girl while he was living in a hotel at Exeter Road, Exmouth.
