A convicted sex offender has been put behind bars after being “stung” by a paedophile hunter group.
Giles Cockett, of Dick Lane, Bradford, had been given a five-year community order, which included a sex offender treatment programme, back in 2018. But in August last year he started communicating with a decoy profile who he believed to be a 14-year-old girl.
Socially-isolated Cockett, 39, talked online with the decoy over a six-day period and tried to incite her to perform sexual acts. At one point he told her she would look sexy in a swimming costume and sent her an indecent photo of himself.
Bradford Crown Court heard on Friday that the messaging was reported to the police and Cockett – who has autism – was arrested at his home. Cockett eventually pleaded guilty to charges of attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child and attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity.
The court heard the police also found two indecent images of children on his mobile phone and Cockett also admitted possession of that indecent material. Judge Sophie McKone said Cockett, who was sentenced via a video link to HMP Leeds, had now expressed remorse and had recognised the inappropriate nature of what he had done.
But she said his previous convictions, which also included another community order in 2020 for possessing indecent images of children, were a significantly aggravating feature of the case. She told him: “You engaged in sexual communication with someone you believed, and no doubt hoped, was a 14-year-old girl. It was in fact a decoy but you did not know that and you engaged in sexual talk with somebody who in your mind was 14.”
The judge said Cockett had also contributed to the sexual abuse of real children by providing a market for the indecent images that were found on his phone. Cockett, who will serve up to half of his 32-month jail sentence, will now have to register as a sex offender with the police for the rest of his life and comply with the restrictions imposed under an indefinite sexual harm prevention order.
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