Harlow paedophile jailed over child grooming in Southend (From Echo)

Harlow paedophile jailed over child grooming in Southend

11:30am Monday 15th March 2010 in

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A CONVICTED paedophile has been jailed for sexually grooming a teenage girl.

Peter May, 48, was handed a 28-month sentence after pleading guilty to five charges relating to sexual grooming of a girl in Southend.

The offences started when she was only 14. At the time May was serving a 12-month suspended sentence after being convicted for performing a sex act in front of a child in 2008.

May, who has a wife of 28 years, with whom he has children and grandchildren, first met the girl in an internet chatroom in 2007, Basildon Crown Court heard yesterday.

The pair communicated online and later May begged the girl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, to meet him and send him explicit pictures of herself. In exchange he sent her indecent pictures of himself.

The pair arranged to meet privately on two occasions in Southend, but nothing physical happened.

Prosecuting Carolyn Gardiner said the girl felt harassed by May and made excuses to avoid seeing him.

But May instigated “accidental” meetings with the teenager in Southend when she was with friends and family, and he was with his own family. He also admitted showing a picture of the girl to another woman.

Police unmasked May during a routine visit to his home to check he was not breaching the terms of his suspended sentence. They discovered himnaked from the waist down, looking at pictures of young girls on the internet. They seized his computer and found more than 800 pictures of the girl on it. They then arrested him.

Michael Procter, mitigating, told the court May was battling with a sex addiction, and claimed he had been abused as a child.

Sentencing Judge John Lodge said: “You had no reasonable grounds for believing the victim was over 16.” Judge Lodge sentenced May to 16 months for the five charges, and activated the 12month suspended sentence to run consecutively.

He was given a sexual offences prevention provision order for ten years and will be on the sexual offences register for the same length of time.

At an earlier hearing, May, of Collins Meadow, Harlow, pleaded guilty to one count of meeting a child following sexual grooming, one count of making 860 indecent images of a child, one count of making 40 indecent images of a child, one count of showing indecent images of a child, and one count of incitement to distribute the images.