Man offered to pay ‘girls’ for photos

A MAN offered to pay what he believed were 12-year-old girls to send him naked pictures of themselves.

Dean Jeffreys contacted his targets on social media and began grooming them and trying to get them to take intimate photographs and to engage in sexual activity.

But the 25-year-old was actually communicating with undercover investigators working as part of a policing operation.

Swansea Crown Court heard that in November and December 2019 Jeffreys approached what appeared to be young girls called Holly and Sophie on the Kik platform.

Tom Scapens, prosecuting, said Holly and Sophie were actually decoy profiles being run by adults working for the National Crime Agency.

He said the decoys made it clear to Jeffreys they were aged just 12 but he began asking them if they wanted £150, and asked them to send him intimate photos of themselves for the money.

When the “girls” expressed concerns about that he promised them they would be safe, and told them it would be their “little secret”.

The court heard Jeffreys was persistent with the decoy Sophie, repeatedly putting pressure on her to send pictures and calling her his “little princess”. He also engaged in a series of sexualised phone chats with her.

The prosecutor said that at one stage Sophie sent a photograph to Jeffreys – it was actually a picture of the exposed midriff of a woman over 18 –and the defendant then started using that image to try to blackmail the decoy.

Mr Scapens said the defendant embarked on a “campaign of grooming, bullying, harassment and threats” which saw him telling Sophie he would post the image on Facebook for all her friends to see unless she sent him more intimate pictures.

Police traced the address and then went to the property where he was living with his parents and other family members.

When challenged by police, he told them about an app he had been using which was “just role playing”, adding: “I don’t know why but it turns me on.”

Jeffreys, of Princess Court, Llanelli, had previously pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted sexual communication with a child, and two counts of attempting to incite a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity when he appeared in the dock for sentencing. He has no previous convictions.

Kate Williams, for Jeffreys, acknowledged that immediate custody was inevitable. She said he was a man of hitherto clean character who was “not an unintelligent man”, and she said she had advised him to put that intelligence to good use while in custody and to gain some qualifications.

Judge Geraint Walters said a pre-sentence report concluded that Jeffreys potentially posed a danger to children, and he said he hoped work could be undertaken in jail which would reduce that risk.

Giving Jeffreys the required one-third discount for his guilty pleas, the judge sentenced him to two years and four months in prison. The defendant will serve up to half that period in custody before being released on licence to serve the rest in the community.

Jeffreys will be a registered sex offender for 10 years, and was made the subject of a sexual harm prevention order for the same period.