A Coventry man tried to meet a 13-year-old girl for sex just three months after he had been given a suspended sentence for having extreme images of sex acts with animals.
But when Joshua Turner arrived at Tile Hill station to see the girl, he was confronted by members of a group who had set up a fake online profile and the police were contacted.
Turner (21) of Nixon Road, Tile Hill, pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to attempting to meet a child following grooming and breaching his suspended sentence.
He was jailed for a total of two-and-a-half years – and was ordered to register as a sex offender for life, as well as being made subject to a sexual harm prevention order for 15 years.
Prosecutor Oliver Woolhouse said: “He is already on the sex offender register for ten years following a sentence in October 2017 for four offences of possessing extreme pornography and one of possessing an indecent image of a child.”
Four of the images showed women involved in sex acts with dogs – but one movie was of a girl aged 11, also being subjected to a sex act by a dog while performing a sex act on a man.
It was said when Turner was sentenced for those offences that although he had searched for bestiality clips, he had not specifically been looking for ones involving children.
But in January this year, just three months after the suspended sentence had been imposed, ‘Josh aged 21’ began to engage in online chat on his phone with someone he believed was a 13-year-old girl.
But ‘Gracie,’ who he had met through an online dating app, was in fact an adult woman who operated as a decoy for a group calling itself Redemption.
She did not initiate any sexual conversation and made Turner aware on a number of occasions that Gracie was only 13 – but within minutes his chat became sexual in nature, with him detailing a number of fetishes.
He sent her an image of him exposing himself, and told her that that if they met he would let her touch it.
They arranged to meet the following day, but when he turned up at Tile Hill station expecting to see Gracie, he was instead confronted by members of the group.
Mr Woolhouse said Turner became distressed and somewhat aggressive, telling them he should not be there because he was ‘on the register.’
The police were called, and after Turner was arrested he told officers he was schizophrenic and that voices had told him to meet the girl, although he claimed he would have sat down with her and told her not to do it.
Judge Anthony Potter jailed Turner for two years for attempting to meet Gracie – consecutive to six months of the suspended sentence which he was also ordered to serve.
