A PAEDOPHILE who appeared in court for refusing to take part in a treatment course insists he is innocent and says he has plans to sue his seven-year-old victim.

Retired brewery worker John Thompson was spared jail in July after he insisted he was unable to fight off the girl as she pinned him to a bed and forced her tongue into his mouth.

Child protection officials condemned the 61-year-old, from Hartlepool, for his “outrageous”

claims, and said he should have been jailed.

They branded as despicable the eight-month suspended jail sentence, which was passed along with a treatment order, supervision and a ban on contact with under-16s.

Within a month of his court appearance, Thompson failed to turn up at a meeting with a probation worker, and when he attended others he was said to be unco-operative and hostile.

Nigel Soppitt, prosecuting, told Teesside Crown Court on Friday that officials from the Probation Service consider the order to be unworkable because of Thompson’s attitude.

He has now said he is innocent, had received bad legal advice before he admitted the offence and is threatening to sue the schoolgirl for making the allegation against him.

Judge Gillian Matthews, who passed the original sentence, told Thompson he was spared jail in the summer only because she wanted him to go on the treatment course.

She said: “Your approach to the Probation Service has been absolutely disgraceful...

you have to engage with them.

“If you do not, you will go to prison.

“I am not having this attitude you have displayed at appointments.

You have got one more chance – that’s it. If you do not turn up with a better attitude, you will then go to prison.”

Judge Matthews will have an update in a month, during which time Thompson, of Willow Walk, Hartlepool, will have had another opportunity to take part in the programme.

She said: “He is already complaining about his legal team, saying he should not have pleaded guilty, and that he will sue the complainant – all classic traits of a paedophile.”

Lorraine Mustard, for Thompson, said her client struggled to understand the terms of the suspended sentence order, but that he was now in no doubt what would happen if he failed again.

She said: “He understands that the Probation Service have to confront him with some very difficult issues and the fact he feels uncomfortable about them is neither here nor there.

“There seems to be some misunderstanding which has been underlined to him today, that the onus is upon him to apply himself.”