A convicted child rapist had under age sex with two different girls after being freed from a youth detention centre.

Chase Elliott started relationships with two 15-year-old girls after his sentence for raping a ten-year-old girl in Plymouth when he was just 13 was cut by the Court of Appeal.

He had sex with one while he was living in Teignmouth and the other after moving to a bedsit in Barnstaple. where he enrolled as a student at Petroc College.

Elliott, now d 22, was jailed at Plymouth Crown Court in March 2008 for the rape of a ten-year-old girl in a garden shed near his home in the city.

The offence occurred when he was aged just 13 but he was 14 by the time he was sentenced.

His original sentence of four years was cut to two years in June 2008 by the Appeal Court and he was released from the Atkinson Unit in Exeter in 2010 without receiving any ’effective treatment’.

He went on to have under age sex with one girl in Teignmouth in 2012 and a second 15-year-old at his bedsit in Barnstaple in July 2013, when he was aged 19. Both girls were virgins before they had sex with him.

His relationship with the first girl continued after she became pregnant shortly before her 17th birthday and she has since given birth to a son.

Elliott, of Sunflower Road, Barnstaple, was cleared of raping the second girl and another 17-year-old at two different trials at Exeter Crown Court in November 2014 and December 2015.

He admitted a total of three counts of sexual activity with a child and was ordered to attend a sex offenders’ treatment programme as part of a three-year community order.

Recorder Mr David Bartlett said it was a more constructive course than sending him to jail because he has been in custody for 17 months, which is the equivalent of a 34-month sentence.

He ordered Elliott to sign on the sex offenders’ register for five years and imposed a Sexual Harm Prevention Order which bars him from unsupervised contact with anyone under 16 for the next five years.

He told him: ’The reason I am not passing a sentence of around three years is because you have already served the equivalent of 34 months and I am taking the more constructive course recommended in the probation pre sentence report.

’There are hints in the report that you are still interested in under-age sex and may still have a residual interest in girls aged 14 and 15.

’I need to say this to you. You must keep your hands off all such girls. You must not touch them or go near them because if you do you will be prosecuted and face a much more savage sentence.’

The Recorder said the most serious aggravating feature of the case was Elliott’s previous conviction for the rape of the ten-year-old girl in Plymouth.

Richard Crabb, prosecuting, said Elliott started a relationship with a 15-year-old in 2012 and pressured her into having sex when she was about six months short of her 16th birthday.

He met the second victim in Barnstaple and had sex with her. She claimed he ripped off her clothes and forced her to have sex on his bed, but he was cleared of rape after telling a jury it was consensual.

Nigel Wraith, mitigating, said Elliott had served his time for the Plymouth rape at the Atkinson Unit in Exeter but added: ’He does not appear to have received any treatment which was meaningful or effective.

’The probation report has more optimistic comments about him, saying he does have a problem with his attraction to girls under 16 and wants help to address and change that which would be done most effectively on a sex offenders’ treatment programme.’