A paedophile who fondled an 11-year-old girl feared jail so much he faked his own suicide and fled to the other side of the world for 10 years.
He was tracked down and spent 227 days in a harsh Thai jail waiting for extradition back to Britain.
But today a judge told him that the original charge did not even carry a prison sentence, Wales Online reported.
Mold Crown Court in North Wales heard that Idwal Glyn Jones, now 57, panicked after he was charged with fondling the girl’s breasts in 2004.
He left his clothes, shoes and some pills at the edge of a deep lake at Dorothea Quarry in the Nantlle Valley, Gwynedd, and police spent hours with underwater search teams looking for his body.
In fact he was alive and well after escaping to Thailand, where he lived for almost 10 years until he was extradited under an European arrest warrant.
The court heard that at one stage Jones’s partner and children followed him to Thailand.
Today Judge David Hale told him that even though his actions did have a “profound effect” on the girl he had molested, sentencing guidelines did not suggest a jail term – certainly not one longer than the time he had already served in Thailand, where he was said to have had little to eat and was kept shackled at night.
The judge branded him “an extremely stupid and foolish man” for giving into temptation and touching the child on two occasions. The offences were aggravated by the result on the victim and the allegation that he had shown her a pornographic film.
“It has had a profound effect upon her,” he said.
The victim, now in her early 20s, had told how her mother became more protective after the attack, and she had rebelled against that, which caused many family difficulties.
Jones, who in 2004 lived at Plas Gwernoer, Nantlle, admitted two charges of sexual activity with a child. He was placed on a three-year community order with supervision and he must register with the police as a sex offender for five years.
Prosecutor Andrew McInnes said that in the summer of 2004 the girl revealed that Jones had twice deliberately touched and fondled her breasts.
When police went to his home and arrested him he said “Oh my God” and refused to be interviewed.
On August 7, 2004, his clothing, shoes and a bottle of his prescribed tablets were found scattered about at Dorothea Quarry.
Investigations eventually showed that he had gone to Thailand and he was arrested on August 2 last year.
The court also heard that more than 700 indecent images of children had been found on his computer in 2004 but he had not been extradited for that and could now not be prosecuted for the offences.
