Ian Watkins: Paedophile singer guilty of having phone in prison Published duration 9 August 2019

image copyright South Wales Police image caption Ian Watkins is already serving a 29-year prison term for 13 sex offences

Paedophile former rock star Ian Watkins has been found guilty of having a mobile phone while in prison.

The ex-frontman of Welsh band Lostprophets "produced a small white telephone" after a strip search in HMP Wakefield in March last year.

He is serving a 29-year prison term at the jail for 13 sex offences including the attempted rape of a baby.

Watkins, 42, was jailed at Leeds Crown Court for 10 months, to be served consecutively to his current sentence.

Judge Rodney Jameson QC said: "I am very conscious of the fact you are serving a very long time and you will be well into middle age by the time you are released.

"The fact of the matter is if there is not an appreciable penalty for having had a mobile phone in these circumstances then of course you would draw from that the lesson you could have another one and that is not a position I would want to encourage."

Giving evidence during the trial, Watkins, from Pontypridd in Wales, said he was locked up with "mass murderers, rapists, paedophiles, serial killers - the worst of the worst".

He claimed two men walked into his cell and told him to look after the phone.

Asked if he was prepared to name the men in court, he told jurors: "No. I like my head on my body."

During the five-day trial, the court heard Watkins was strip-searched in the jail after a woman called to say she thought he had been talking to her on a banned mobile.

After the search, Watkins produced a small mobile from his body after he became concerned he would not be able to see his mother who was visiting from Wales.

Prosecutor Stephen Wood said the small GT-Star phone had been used to contact a woman named Gabriella Persson, who jurors were told had previously been in a relationship with Watkins.

The singer was jailed in 2013 for admitting 13 sex offences, including the attempted rape of a baby, which a judge said "plumbed new depths of depravity".

The two women, only known as Woman A and Woman B, were jailed for 14 and 17 years.

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