A SINGLE mum with a two-year-old child was left "devastated" after learning a man she’d started a relationship with was a convicted sex offender, a court has heard.

The young Bournemouth woman had no idea Andrew Dolman - who was staying at her flat two nights a week - had indecently assaulted a young girl in Warwickshire in 2000.

Nor was she aware he’d also been convicted of having penetrative sex with a girl under the age of 16, and detaining a child, by a Weymouth court in 2012.

Under sex offence legislation Dolman is duty bound to inform police of any change of address, and is prohibited from residing in the same home as a child.

On Friday at Bournemouth Crown Court, Dolman was sentenced to ten months in prison after pleading guilty to breaching a number of notification requirements of the sex offenders register.

The court heard Dolman, age 34, had effectively "fallen off the radar" after being evicted from his address in December 2016.

He also used two aliases without informing police, which was prohibited under the terms of the sex offenders register. He used the name Robin Twist on Facebook, and Andy Wood on the dating website Plenty of Fish.

Indeed, when police finally caught up with Dolman in August, this year, he was living at the flat at Bournemouth, under the name Andy Wood.

Prosecuting, Robin Sellers said the woman he was living with “would never have entered into a relationship with the defendant had she known the true facts.”

Defending, Peter Asteris, told the court Dolman had turned to drugs aged 12, after experiencing a "brutal" upbringing, dominated by sexual and physical abuse.

“When he met the young woman it was the first time in his life someone genuinely appeared to care for him," said Mr Asteris.

“Yes, he misled her, he hid the fact he was a sex offender. Five nights a week he’d live rough on the streets, pretending he’d got a night job.

“But he had a desperate desire to be normal.”

The court also heard he’d breached notification requirements of sexual offence orders on two past occasions.

Sentencing Dolman, Judge Haggan said: “The young woman was completely oblivious to your background. She had no idea you were a sex offender.

“When she discovered the truth she was devastated.”