Warwick man jailed after arranging to meet 13 year old at St Nicholas Park

[dutchman]

A Warwick man has been jailed for 20 months after trawling the internet with ‘a degree of determination’ in a bid to find an under-age girlfriend - and was caught after contacting a decoy profile



Thinking he had made contact with a willing 13-year-old called Sienna, Craig Withey turned up to meet her in a park with a blanket on which he planned to have sex with her.

But she did not exist, and instead he was met by members of a vigilante group who had placed the fake profile online.

He pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to two charges of attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity and two of attempting to incite girls to view indecent images he had sent of himself.

And after an adjournment for a schedule to be prepared, he asked for eight further offences of attempting to incite other girls to engage in sexual activity to be taken into consideration.

Withey (31) of St Michaels Road, Warwick, was jailed for 20 months by Judge Peter Cooke who also ordered him to register as a sex offender for ten years.

Judge Cooke observed: “What the TICs now reveal is how determinedly he was trawling on the internet, trying to attract girls of that age for sexual encounters.”

Jailing Withey, he told him: “You embarked on internet searching for girls, as you believed them to be.

“I know two of them were not girls, but fictional people created by vigilantes who think it’s their role to trap people with an interest in contacting children on the internet.

“But what your intention was is made perfectly plain by a number of factors.

“The first is that, having arranged a meeting with one of these girl identities, you brought with you a blanket to put down on the ground, plainly expecting that that sexual encounter you had talked about would take place.

“You were trawling to find a girlfriend. It is quite clear to me that your clear intention was to engage in sexual activity with any of these girls who proved to be willing.

“This is a determined trawl for girls in that age bracket to engage in sexual contact with them.

“If you had established communication with a real girl, the probation service has no doubt, and I have no doubt, you would have followed it through with sexual activity.

“As it stands, you represent a high degree of risk to girls in that age bracket.”