A COVENTRY man who believed he was talking to two girls under 16 online and made numerous sexually inappropriate comments to them has been jailed for 32 months.
Daryl Connolly, aged 34 from Handley Close, Coventry, believed he was talking to the two girls on online messaging apps between February and July of 2020- unaware they were both fakes.
In fact, the accounts were part of two separate investigations- one conducted by the police and the other carried out independently.
During these conversations, Connolly made several sexually inappropriate comments and tried to ask for them to meet up with him.
Decoy One, from the independent organisation, was presented as being 14 years of age, and Connolly made many requests for inappropriate pictures and asked for ‘her’ to perform sexual acts on ‘herself.’
Decoy Two, the account operated by police, was presented as being 13 years old, and again, Connolly requested pictures and sent a series of sexually inappropriate messages.
On August 29, after a full investigation into data pulled from his electronic devices following an initial arrest in July 2020, Connolly was charged with two counts of attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child and one count of attempting to incite a 14-year-old girl to engage in sexual activity.
As well as the 32-month prison term, Connolly will be required to pay a £181 victim’s surcharge.
He is also required to register with police under the Sexual Offences Act 2003 indefinitely and has been given a sexual harm prevention order severely restricting his usage of electronic devices until December 2033.
Officer in charge of the investigation, DC Gallagher said: “Over the course of what he believed were conversations with underage children, Connolly comes close to self-awareness at several points – he grapples with the idea that what he is doing is wrong but then continues sending the explicit messages anyway.
“A sentence of over two and a half years in prison should give him all the time he needs to properly come to understand the full nature of his activities, and the children he could have caused harm to”.
“Upon his release, we will be keeping a very close eye on him for the rest of his life.”
