A PAEDOPHILE who negotiated online with child killer Jon Venables was jailed for breaching a sexual offences prevention order.

Leslie Blanchard, 53, visited dating sites and viewed adult internet pornography on three separate occasions, despite an order being put in place banning him from doing so.

Earlier this year, it emerged that Blanchard was in internet contact with Venables, who was convicted of murdering toddler James Bulger after leading him from the Strand shopping centre, in Bootle, in 1993.

Passing sentence yesterday, Judge Anthony Pitts said: “Unbelievably, you took the risk of being found out and accessing that material, not once, but three times.”

Blanchard, a kitchen fitter from Chelmsford, Essex, received a three-year community order at the same court in October last year after admitting “arranging or facilitating a sexual offence against a child”, plus a series of child pornography offences.

He admitted breaching the order and accessing the websites on February 27, March 16 and July 20 this year.

The contact with Venables, who was given a new name after being convicted of James’s murder, took place in 2008.

Details of their internet relationship emerged in July when Venables pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to child pornography charges.

One of the charges related to allegedly distributing child pornography to Blanchard.