HOSPITAL fetish pervert Norman Hutchins has once again been locked up for three years.

Norman Hutchins, 56, of no fixed address but formerly of York, has a history of faking ailments to gain access to hospitals.

Once there he satisfies his strange appetite for oxygen masks, gowns and syringes.

He was handed the UK's first and only nationwide ASBO in 2005 after a number of offences in hospitals dating back to 1970.

Only days after his release from a previous three-year sentence Hutchins once again claimed hehad been beaten up to gain access to Bradford Royal Infirmary.

However computer checks alerted staff to his ASBO.

Judge Paul Hoffman sentenced Hutchins. He said: "Your previous convictions indicat a propensity to bizarre behaviour and you have not been willing to take professional help.

"You are an obsessive and obdurate man and you are obsessed with all things medical and hospitals. You committed this deliberate breach and once again you were bothering hard-pressed NHS workers.

"You are 56, a little late, I suspect, to change. This sentence is to protect the public from you."

Hutchins was released on May 4 this year and told of the ASBO which banned him from entering any NHS or private medical establishment without prior permission.

But just over a week later on May 13 Hutchins phoned for an ambulance cliaming he had been assaulted by two men outside a bingo hall in Bradford and was suffering from abdominal pains.

He had already been in the hospital the previous day complaining of chest pains, however he was not uncovered that time and discharged.

Prosecuting Tom Storey said: "On the second occasion he did not mention he was the subject of an order, but checks by staff revealed a mark against his name indicating he was a patient likely to cause problems. It was then clear to hospital staff trating him that he was the subject of an order.

"He was unkempt and unclean and had been living on the streets and maintained he had been assaulted. He said, 'why can't you put me in a police ward?' Police were called and he was arrested."

Mr Storey said Hutchins had 31 convictions dating back to 1970.

In 1997 and 1999 he was charged with obtaining property by deception. He claimed on those occasions that the surgical masks were for a fancy dress party but really they were for his own sexual gratification.

In 2002 he admitted three counts of assaulting hospital staff and in 2004 he treatened staff with a knife and demanded masks. He was jailed for three years for those attacks and the ASBO was subsequently imposed.

Defending Andrew Semple said Hutchins had been diagnosed as having Munchausen syndrome. Sufferers fake illness to gain sympathy.

He had pleaded guilty to breaching his ASBO at an earlier hearing.