Man’s online sex talk was actually with police officer

A SEEMINGLY respectable businessman spent months engaged in disgusting online chat with what he believed to be a schoolboy.

David Richard Badham repeatedly told the boy in very graphic terms he wanted sex with him and asked him to travel to Carmarthen so they could meet and “play” in the back of his van.

But the 52-year-old was actually communicating with a police officer who was part of an operation designed to catch paedophiles.

Swansea Crown Court heard Badham’s online activities have cost him his good name, “his business, and his family”.

Stephen Rees, prosecuting, said Badham was caught in an undercover operation run by police in Northern Ireland.

Between January 2019 and June 2019 the defendant engaged in highly sexualised conversations with someone he believed to be a 14-year-old boy.

The court heard that Badham sent a series of graphic messages describing what he wanted to do to the boy and what sex acts he wanted the boy to perform on him.

Despite the contact telling him he was aged just 14 the defendant requested photographs of his genitals and sent him videos of a man, believed to be the defendant himself, performing a sex act.

Badham, of Mount Pleasant Way, Milford Haven, pleaded guilty to two counts of attempting to cause a child to watch sexual activity for the purposes of sexual gratification and four counts of attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity.

The court heard he has no previous convictions.

Dyfed Thomas, for Badham, said his client’s behaviour and resulting conviction was a “substantial fall from grace” which had cost him his good name, “his business, and his family”.

Judge Paul Thomas QC told Badham: “You can protest as much as you want that this was not sexually motivated. Frankly, that is nonsensical.”

Giving the defendant a one-third discount for his guilty pleas the judge sentenced him to a total of 16 months in prison, suspended for two years, and ordered him to complete the Horizon sex offenders programme, a rehabilitation course, and 150 hours of unpaid work.

Badham will be a registered sex offender for the next 10 years and was made the subject of a sexual harm prevention order for the same length of time.