'Horny' paedophile targeted 12-year-old just months after being being spared jail at Leeds court
A convicted paedophile handed a suspended sentence was later caught trying to chat with a 12-year-old girl, asking her is she was “horny”.
Regan Lord was in fact talking to an undercover officer posing as a child online to catch out predators.
It came just four months after the 28-year-old was convicted of possessing indecent images of children and handed a nine-month sentence, suspended for two years.
He was also given a 10-year sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) designed to curb his internet use.
But Leeds Crown Court was told that the predatory pervert latched onto the supposed 12-year-old girl on the chatroom platform, Chatib, on July 8.
She told him she was 12, but it failed to deter him, prosecutor Jennifer Gatland told the court.
They moved the conversation to Snapchat and asked her is she was “horny too”.
He sent her a picture of him in his boxer shorts, and told her he was in bed waiting for her. He asked her for a photo with her legs opened up, claiming he wanted to know if she was real or fake, or even a police officer.
He was arrested from his home on Lee Moor Road in Stanley, Wakefield, on July 30. They found the boxer shorts he had posed in for the photograph.
They also found several devices he had not declared to his offender manager, putting him in breach of his SHPO.
During his police interview, he denied speaking to the supposed girl. He later admitted three counts of breach of his SHPO, and attempted sexual communications with a child.
Mitigating, Eleanor Durdy said that despite his offending he had engaged well and made progress since his arrest.
She said he accepted responsibility and “expressed disappointment in himself”. She said he struggled with his mental health and “knows his behaviour is inexcusable”.
Judge Robin Mairs opted to defer sentencing until March 24 next year.
Bluntly, he told Lord: “These offences do not occur because of anxiety or depression, they occur because you have a sexual interest in children, pre-pubescent girls.
“It drove you to breach the SHPO deliberately, to seek out contact with what you believed was a 12-year-old girl.
He told him he needed to co-operate fully with probation until his next court date, attend “each and every appointment” and engage.