Locations
Ripley Street, Warrington, WA5
Description
A PAEDOPHILE was snared by waiting police officers after arranging to meet a child for sex at a McDonald’s.
Nikolas Buchholz engaged in disgusting and depraved sexual chats online with someone he believed to be a 13-year-old girl.
The 37-year-old father was in fact however talking with an undercover police officer trained to expose child-sex offenders.
He was subsequently charged with attempted sexual communications with a child and attempting to meet a child after grooming.
He was also convicted of counts of attempting to cause a child to engage in sexual activity and two counts of attempting to cause a child to watch sexual activity.
Lee Bonner, prosecuting the case at Liverpool Crown Court on Thursday, May 18, explained how on the first day of his trial, the defendant changed his pleas to guilty on all five charges.
The defendant was snared in an operation run by an undercover police officer posing under the guise of an account purporting to be Grace, as 13-year-old girl.
The officer was deployed online, on the social media app Kik Messenger, with the task of detecting offenders with a sexual interest in children.
The court heard how the officer registered with the username ‘lilgrace07’, and it was clear in the ‘bio’ of the profile that it was being run by a 13-year-old girl.
On April 19, 2021, the profile was messaged by the defendant, assisted in court by a Romanian interpreter, under the username ‘buddyf**k4fun’, who said he was a 34-year-old man from Warrington.
The officer told him they were a 13-year-old girl from Manchester, but despite knowing this, Buchholz began to sexualise the conversation, asking about her previous sexual activity and offering to ‘teach her’.
This continued over several days, during which time he sent her a photo of his face and the steering wheel of his BMW, and asked her to send him photos of herself.
As talk progressed over three weeks, he sent the officer photos and videos of his erect penis, asking if she liked it and encouraging her to perform sex acts on herself, calling it ‘their secret game’.
The ‘girl’ said that she was scared and that she was worried she would get into trouble if her mum found out, but the defendant said she could be his ‘secret pleasure’.
Discussion soon turned to meeting up for sex, and despite Buchholz stating he was worried about it being a trap and him going to prison, he still continued with the chats.
They arranged to meet at a McDonald’s in the Fallowfield area, and when he arrived in his silver BMW, he was met by plain clothed police officers and arrested.
The defendant’s Samsung mobile phone was seized, showing the chat history, and during an interview he said that he thought he was communicating with an adult, and that talk of a 13-year-old girl was a ‘joke’.
Defending his client, Matt Lawson said that Buchholz has no previous convictions and has not committed any further offences since.
He also spoke of the defendant’s ‘genuine expression of remorse and regret’, and while he is not living with his family at present, his wife, who was present in court, ‘remains fully supportive of him and bringing the family unit back together’.
The court was told that he works full time for Amazon, as well as an additional job on top, to provide for his family and send money home to his elderly parents, who are in poor health back in his native Romania.
Before sentencing, judge David Aubrey commented that Buchholz believed he was ‘grooming the ‘girl’’ and that sexual activity was ‘clearly intended’.
He added that this would have taken place had he not in fact been chatting with an undercover police officer.
“The fact she was 13, or so you believed, did not deter you. It encouraged you, such was your perversion,” The judge concluded.
Buchholz, of Ripley Street in Whitecross, was sentenced to 43 months in prison.
He was also made the subject of sex offender registration and notification requirements indefinitely and a sexual harm prevention order for the next 10 years.