Officer posed as dad of boy, 12, to catch paedophile

ILLEGAL IMAGES ON HIS PHONE

A paedophile tried to arrange to have sex with a 12-year-old boy unaware, initially at least, he was communicating with an undercover police officer.

In messages described at Leicester Crown Court, Andrew Heathcote spoke about what he wanted to do with the boy.

He met the officer on a chat site and said he was interested in sex with young boys.

When the officer said he had a 12-year-old son Heathcote could have sex with, Heathcote, 55, replied: “Oh, perfect age!”

He added he thought it was “great to meet teens” for sex but “really wanted a younger boy now”.

He told the officer how excited he was to meet his son and sent an image of himself in an aroused state.

Heathcote even spoke to an officer posing as the boy on the phone.

But the court heard Heathcote, of Lime Avenue, Sapcote, began to get suspicious after the phone conversation and correctly feared that it was a police officer trying to entrap him.

After he broke off his WhatsApp conversation with the officer, police went to arrest him.

His phone was found to have more than 1,000 illegal images, mostly of young children.

Heathcote admitted the charge of attempting to arrange or facilitate the commission of a child sexual offence, committed between September 2 and October 8, 2020.

Nicola Hunter, representing Heathcote, said her client, whose partner of 20 years was in court to support him, would lose his job if he was jailed.

As a result, the couple would lose their home because they would not be able to keep up the mortgage payments, Ms Hunter told the court.

She said: “His partner is going to have a difficult time if he resides in the same house.” Ms Hunter said a probation service report about Heathcote made clear he was “struggling to come to terms with the reality of his behaviour”.

She said: “It appears he was living in a fantasy world for a while and got embroiled in it.

“When asked now ‘Are you interested in children?’ he says no.”

Recorder Balraj Bhatia KC, sentencing, jailed Heathcote for three years and gave him a life-long sexual harm prevention order.

He told Heathcote: “It’s quite plain there’s a dark side to you that even your partner finds deplorable.

“That’s plain from the contact you had with the undercover police officer who was pimping out a fictional character – a 12-year-old – for your sexual gratification.

“You stopped because you became nervous this was entrapment.”