A judge ruled this man can't have sex without giving police 24hrs notice: TOM RAWSTORNE asks if the tent dweller who has lost his family despite being cleared of rape is a danger to women or a victim of a most extreme sanction

At the age of 45, John O'Neill is unemployed and struggling to survive on state handouts (below right). 


A family man, he had owned his own home on the outskirts of York, living there with his long-term partner and their two young daughters. But today he is single. Having separated, his partner has moved to America, taking the children with her. As for his living arrangements, they consist of a one-man tent erected in scrubland on the outskirts of the city (left). All he was ever guilty of, he insists, was to indulge in a bit of light sado-masochism, or S&M - the sort of thing featured in the blockbusting Fifty Shades Of Grey series of books. Yet many will find his sexual leanings, which have included a fascination with a practice known as 'rape play', hard to dismiss merely as 'Fifty Shades' fantasies. (inset John in 2015).