Woman posed online as a 12-year-old to catch paedophile
AWOMAN who works with victims of abuse went undercover to catch a paedophile.
Back in 2007, Giovanni Abbondandolo was jailed after a mother saw him performing a sex act on her daughter’s computer, live via webcam.
Now the 45-year-old from Rochdale is back behind bars after trying to lure someone he thought was a 12-yearold girl to meet him at Piccadilly train station.
In reality the ‘girl’ was a woman who works with victims of sexual offenders who decided to investigate how bad the problem of online grooming is under her own steam.
She ended up capturing scores of messages and footage of Giovanni Abbondandolo as he coaxed her to meet him ‘wearing a short skirt and high heels’.
Over three weeks he sent lewd messages to the woman, thinking that she was a child living in the south of England.
The evidence she collected has put Abbondandolo behind bars for the second time in 11 years.
Describing why she went undercover, the woman said: “I work with children who have been victims of sexual abuse.
“I kept seeing all these stories about people confronting alleged offenders and thought to myself ‘the situation can’t be this bad’. So I decided to find out.
“I got a picture of myself as a 12-year-old and put it on a chat site.
“Within seconds Abbondandolo – who called himself Tim – was sending images of himself to me, including naked ones. I never met him.
“I handed over everything I had to Greater Manchester Police. They arrested him a month later. I gave them all the phone chat I had kept and four hours of him talking and videos. I downloaded a screensaver so it would record him chatting with me.”
At Manchester Crown Court Abbondandolo pleaded guilty to attempting to engage in sexual act in presence of a child, and attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity.
He was jailed for six years and eight months, made the subject of a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for an indefinite period, and placed on the Sexual Offenders Register indefinitely.
It was only after handing over her dossier to police the woman then discovered who ‘Tim’ really was – and was shocked to discover Abbondandolo had been jailed in 2007 for similar offences.
In that case Metropolitan Police joined forces with GMP to track down Abbondandolo after the alarm was raised by a shocked mum whose daughter he had approached on a chat site.
“I was livid when I found out he had done this before”, the woman whose evidence has caged him again said.
“I was livid when I found out he had done this before”