A PAEDOPHILE from Pershore has been jailed for four-and-a-half years after being convicted of attempting sexual activity with a child following a police operation.
Christopher Webb, 38, of Tilesford, was found guilty of causing/inciting a child to engage in sexual activity with penetration, attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child and attempting to meet a girl under 16 years of age following grooming.
At Worcester Crown Court, Webb was sentenced to four years and six months for the first offence, ten months concurrently and a £228 victim surcharge for the second offence. For the third offence he was handed two years, three months to run concurrently.
He was also ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register with the police indefinitely and given a Sexual Harm Prevention Order (SHPO) lasting ten years.
The SHPO prohibits him from having any unsupervised contact with any female under 18. He must also not use any device capable of accessing the Internet unless he notifies the police of it within 48 hours. Any devices he has must meet strict criteria including the capacity to retain and display the web history which cannot be deleted. The in-private browsing option must not be activated and forensic software must be added to the device.
Caught during sting operation
Webb was snared by undercover West Mercia Police officers in March last year after he began communicating with and grooming a person he believed to be a 12-year-old girl on Snapchat before moving the ‘conversation’ on to WhatsApp.
He sent explicit images of himself to the chat and asked for similar images from the 12-year-old child profile, before arranging to meet at Gloucester Railway Station on March 26 last year. It was then he stated his intention to have sex with the girl.
He continued to express his perverted sexual desires to the ‘girl’ before arriving at the station where he was met by officers and arrested.
On his arrest, Webb had a black bag which contained an envelope full of girl’s underwear with his home address on it.
Further phone searches confirmed his Snapchat account profile and web searches including ‘do under 16s need a train ticket’, confirming he knew his intended victim was underage.
Det Con Rich Britton, from West Mercia’s Online Child Sexual Exploitation Team (OCSET), said: “We are pleased to put this paedophile behind bars before he could carry out any of his disgusting intentions on an actual child, so this operation was a good result to protect potential victims from his depraved behaviour.
“Webb was caught red handed thinking he was speaking online to a girl, and we would warn any other individuals thinking of communicating with a child and attempting to arrange sexual activity like this to be warned it could be the police and you too could be sent to prison.”
Anyone wanting advice about child abuse and child sexual exploitation can visit: orlo.uk/QFVL2 or: orlo.uk/c2eqG to report any sexual offences or rape incidents. People should always call 999 in an emergency or if they are in danger.
