Locations
Morfa View, Bodelwyddan, Rhyl, Denbighshire, LL18
Description
A paedophile tried to groom a 12-year-old boy - but it was actually an undercover police officer. Steven Mellor, of Morfa View, Bodelwyddan, Rhyl, also had a "collection" of indecent images of children.
Mellor, 67, appeared at Mold Crown Court today charged with attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child and attempting to incite a boy under 13 to engage in non-penetrative sexual activity. He was also charged with making indecent photographs of a child, possessing a prohibited image of a child, possessing extreme pornographic images and distributing an indecent photograph of a child.
He was arrested after engaging in conversation with an undercover police officer posing as a 12-year-old boy called Charlie. The court heard how during the conversations, which took place between July and August last year, Mellor would encourage 'Charlie' to perform a sexual act.
Following his arrest, it was discovered that Mellor had also been collecting indecent images of children, aged around nine and ten. Mellor, 67, has no previous convictions and was described by Simon Killeen, defending, as being a "low risk" offender.
He suggested that Mellor be given a suspended sentence due to the fact that he is a 24-hour carer for his elderly mother who is housebound. Mr Killeen described Mellor as leading a "very lonely existence" since moving back into his parents' house in 2002 to care for them.
However, Judge Timothy Petts described Mellor's behaviour as "disgusting" and handed him a prison sentence. Judge Petts said: "You were making considerable contact online with a 12-year-old boy called Charlie. What you didn't know was that Charlie didn't exist and was a police decoy.
"You proceeded to engage in disgusting behaviour and conversation towards him. This led to your arrest and it was discovered that you had multiple images of child sexual abuse and other illegal images in your possession and had on one occasion distributed an image of child sexual abuse.
"The lead offence here is the intent to incite non-penetrative sexual activity with a 12-year-old boy. Your intended conduct was grooming behaviour given the length of time and the nature of the conversation and I also find it particularly unpleasant that you adopted in a way the role of an authority figure when carrying out your abuse.
"It's made worse by the fact that there was a significant disparity in age between you and your intended victim. The images are made more serious by the fact that there are different levels of severity, the period of time in which you were collecting them and one image involves the rape of a child, apparently four years old.
"Decreasing the seriousness you are 67 years old and have no previous convictions, also there is no real child in the communication offence - the children in the images are all too real." Mellor was given a 34-month prison sentence and was also given a sexual harm prevention order for 15 years and will be on the sex offenders register for life.