Locations
Sheriffs Highway, Gateshead, NE9
Description
Jamie Teasdale, of Gateshead, wanted to meet a child for sexual activity and had downloaded indecent images online
A self-confessed paedophile who tried to groom a 13-year-old girl for sexual activity and was twice caught with indecent images of children has been locked up.
Pervert Jamie Teasdale made persistent attempts to groom and meet a child called Chloe - not realising it was a decoy profile online being run by vigilantes.
He admitted he would have engaged in sexual activity with the youngster if she had been real.
Police also found child abuse images on his phone and then later found he had downloaded more after his initial arrest.
Now the 28-year-old, of Sheriffs Highway, Gateshead, has been jailed for three years at Newcastle Crown Court.
Recorder Keir Monteith QC told him: "You have shown you are capable of harming a child, sexually and psychologically."
Paedophile hunters Guardians of the North had set up the Chloe profile online and when Teasdale began communicating with her, he was told she was 13.
He went on to groom her for sex, telling her she was attractive and asking for images of her.
The communication went on for weeks, with Teasdale telling her he wanted to meet her to have sexual activity.
He asked her about whether she had any sexual experience and when told no, he suggested it would be fun to start off with "little things".
Recorder Monteith said: "You later said it was an added bonus she was a child who was willing to discuss sex."
He tried to entice her to go to his home and made an arrangement to meet her but was detained by the vigilantes and arrested.
His laptop was seized and more than 200 indecent images were found, some of the most serious type, including a girl aged between eight and ten being raped.
Teasdale was subsequently arrested again around two years later and had a further 12 indecent images.
And in September 2018 he had distributed one category B indecent image to a woman he was talking to on Kik.
He pleaded guilty to attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming, six counts of making indecent images and one of distributing an indecent image.
As well as the prison sentence, he will have to sign the sex offenders register indefinitely and be subject to a sexual harm prevention order for five years.
Jennifer Coxon, defending, said: "He has not shied away from the fact he has a sexual interest in young children."
Miss Coxon said Teasdale's first job was as a bartender and he ended up having a "difficult relationship with alcohol" and had "dabbled with cannabis".
She added that he had engaged in casual relationships with adults, one of whom he was in bed with watching TV when he first communicated with Chloe.
The court heard he struggled with caring for his mum and his death and has been depressed recently.