A Chorley man has been jailed for having sexualised online chat with a girl he believed to be 14.
Anthony McFarlane, 34, had inappropriate conversations via social media platform KIK and arranged to meet the girl at a hotel in Chorley.
The girl who McFarlane was talking to was an adult acting as a decoy for a group who help to identify sexual predators.
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McFarlane was detained by members of the group at the hotel on 11 April this year and arrested by Lancashire Police officers.
More than 200 messages had been exchanged between McFarlane and the decoy.
The messages showed that McFarlane clearly believed he was communicating with a teenager, and the messages were of a sexual nature.
One of the messages from McFarlane read: “Because think about it I’m meeting an under aged girl that’s staying at mine. That’s the nervous and scary part U get me. If we get caught I go to prison.”
McFarlane appeared at Preston Crown Court last Thursday (24 July) after pleading guilty to attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child and attempting to cause/incite a girl age between 13 and 15 to engage in sexual activity.
He was jailed for three years, placed on the sex offenders’ register for life, and issued with a 10-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
Det Con Mark Edwards from Lancashire Constabulary’s Internet Child Exploitation team said: “McFarlane believed he was messaging a 14-year-old girl and was communicating with her for two months.
“The messages were of a sexual nature, and it was clearly his intention to meet the girl and engage her in sexual activity.
“Thankfully it was a decoy he was messaging, and no one came to any harm.
“This was abhorrent behaviour from McFarlane, and I welcome the prison sentence imposed on him.”
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