Published date: 29 November 2016 |
Published by: Staff reporterRead more articles by Staff reporterEmail reporter
A man posed as a young woman on the internet and got a boy of 15 to indulge in a sex act.
Police recovered over 65,000 chat log messages from over 700 individual chats from his computer, Mold Crown Court was told yesterday.
Many of them involved chats with young girls when he pretended to be a young man.
But one charge before the court involved a teenage boy who was duped into believing he was speaking to a young woman of 21.
“She” persuaded him to perform a sex act to the camera.
Keith David Atkinson, 52, also had indecent films mainly involving under age girls.
Atkinson, of Pippin’s Close in Shotton, who since his arrest has given up his employment, was jailed for 18 months.
He was ordered to register with the police as a sex offender for 10 years and he was made the subject of a 10-year sexual harm prevention order.
Judge Rhys Rowlands described them as disturbing offences which crossed the custody threshold.
“In addition to finding a modest number of videos, which were in the highest category by and large, police found evidence of chat log conversations you had been having over a period of time with young females.”
The conversation with the young boy occurred when the defendant could see him but the boy could not see the defendant.
“You pretended to be a 21-year-old female. You tricked him, for whatever purpose, into indulging in a sex act in front of you,” the judge said.
The offences were aggravated by the nature of the images and the ages of the children involved.
There was a disparity of age – the defendant would have been in his late 40s at the time of the offence with the boy. He was some 34 years older than him.
Earlier this month the defendant, a man of good character, admitted two charges of making indecent videos between August 2005 and June of last year and an incitement charge going back to 2013.
He admitted possessing five indecent videos, four at the worst category A and one at category B.
Prosecuting barrister Duncan Bould told how Atkinson was arrested in June of last year when police, acting on intelligence, went to his home and seized his computer equipment.
An IP address which was downloading child porn was linked to his address.
When analysed, a total of seven films were recovered which showed indecent images of children at the worst category A and B.
A number of other titles of apparent films were found which indicated that they contained child porn, but they were no longer accessible.
“The other thing they found were chat logs on Live Messenger and Skype dating back to 2007,” said Mr Bould.
There were 705 individual chats and more than 65,000 messages.
After his arrest, Atkinson produced a prepared statement in which he claimed that it was research and that he had done it out of curiosity.
He claimed to have no sexual interest in what he was accessing, but that claim was not borne out by the chat logs.
The defendant said he used peer-to-peer software to seek out child porn.
Robin Boag, defending, said there were a mixture of motivations for his client getting involved.
But the pre-sentence report showed that he was motivated to address his behaviour.
His ability to “open up” boded well for the future and he would be suitable for a probation service programme which had a good success rate.
“He is prepared to work with the probation service and address what made him get involved in this behaviour,” said Mr Boag.
Atkinson had lost his good name which was not something he treated lightly.
He had also found it necessary to give up his employment but there were references from his former employer and his ex-wife.
The matter had been hanging over him for 17 months, he had been on unconditional bail, and Mr Boag asked if a sexual harm prevention order was necessary at this stage.
The judge said such an order was proportionate and necessary and said that the case was far too serious for a suspended sentence.
http://www.leaderlive.co.uk/news/169575/shotton-man-posed-as-young-woman-on-the-web-to-get-teenage-boy-to-indulge-in-sex-act.aspx
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