Scarborough man jailed for sordid online sex chats with 'teenage girl'
A Scarborough man has been jailed after downloading dozens of indecent images of children and engaging in sordid online sex chats with what he thought was a young girl but turned out to be an undercover officer.
Anthony Dove, 37, engaged the ‘girl’ in “wholly outrageous” sexual chats on the internet and asked her to send lewd images of herself, York Crown Court heard.
However, unbeknown to him, he was in fact chatting with an undercover police officer posing as a 13-year-old child, said prosecutor Jennifer Gatland.
Dove, of Gladstone Road, was charged with attempted sexual communication with a child and admitted the offence.
It was charged as an attempt because the person chatting with Dove was an adult decoy.
He was also charged with three counts of making or downloading about 90 indecent images of children, some of which were rated Category A – the worst kind of such material.
He was convicted of these offences after denying the allegations.
Dove’s defence counsel said the Scarborough man had never been in trouble before.
Judge Sean Morris, the Recorder of York, told Dove: “In October 2023, you were coasting along on the internet and stumbled across what you thought was a 13-year-old girl.
“Instead, it was a policeman patrolling the internet and it’s a sign of the times that police officers have to sit in their offices patrolling the internet in order to investigate men like yourself who could be chatting with real little girls.”
He added: “You thought you were communicating with a little girl, and you engaged in wholly outrageous conversations with her.
“Anybody who engages in sexual communication with a child must know that that is so serious they should expect an immediate custodial sentence because an element of deterrence has to be there in this kind of offence, so that when people tap on their keyboards, they know that they are possibly tapping on a prison door.”
Mr Morris said that the seriousness of the offences outweighed the long delay in the case reaching sentence and the fact that Dove was of “(previous) good character”.
Jailing Dove for 10 months, he told the defendant: “People who think they are talking to little girls, and talk like you did, have to understand it’s down the stairs.”
Dove was also made subject to a five-year sexual-harm prevention order to curb his online activities.