Andrew Nudd 56

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Paedophile hunters teamed up to catch a pervert with an "unhealthy" sexual interest in children after they tricked him into thinking that he was meeting up with a 14-year-old girl at Hull railway station.

Andrew Nudd began chatting with her on Facebook before sending an intimate picture of himself in an attempt to groom her for sexual activity - but the girl was really a decoy and did not even exist, Hull Crown Court heard.

Nudd, 55, of May Street, Hull, admitted attempting to communicate sexually with a child that he believed was 14, attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity and attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming. Stephen Robinson, prosecuting, said that a woman who was part of an online child protection group set up a profile on Facebook of a fake 14-year-old girl to see if anyone would start a conversation with her.

Nudd sent a message on November 1, 2021 but the non-existent girl sent a message back that made it clear that she was supposedly at school and in a lesson. There were further messages about how they could communicate.

Nudd told her that she was pretty and that they could be friends or more. The conversations became sexualised and he asked the decoy girl for a picture and talked about sexual parts of her body. He asked her if she was turned on.

He sent an intimate picture of himself and spoke about his use of cannabis and said that he was "stoned" while doing so. Text messages were exchanged.

He suggested that they could "get stoned" together and that he would be honoured to be her first boyfriend and that he would be gentle with her.

A meeting was arranged between them at Hull railway station after she had supposedly arrived on a train from Manchester. But the woman behind the fake profile approached a member of another paedophile hunters group for help in apprehending him. Nudd was identified and detained nearby, with others live streaming the confrontation to Facebook.

Screenshots of messages that he sent were handed over to the police, who arrested him. He claimed during interview that he never believed that the fake girl was aged 14 because "everyone lied on the internet".

They had chatted on Facebook for two weeks and it became sexual. The court heard that Nudd had previous convictions, including for affray in September 2021.

Nudd was given a two-year suspended prison sentence, a sex offenders' treatment programme, 20 days' rehabilitation and a 10-year sexual harm prevention order. He must register as a sex offender for 10 years.

Recorder Anthony Hawks told Nudd: "You must have had an unhealthy, perverted sexual interest in pre-pubescent girls. Anybody who hears the facts in this case would be disgusted by your behaviour. You had better start accepting responsibility. The purpose of this probation order is to try to stop you doing this again."

Ben Hammersley, mitigating, said that Nudd appreciated how close he had come to being jailed that day.