Locations
Hele Road, Torquay, Devon, TQ2
Description
A charity worker who arranged to meet girls under the age of 14 for sex in hotels has escaped jail so he can 'get help'.
Toni Stevens asked at least 39 underage girls for 'naughty pictures' and threesomes before he was caught by a vigilante paedophile hunting group who had set up the decoy accounts.
The group called police and Stevens was arrested at the scene on November 27, 2017.
During the sting Stevens said: 'I'm ashamed of myself' and hung his head while listening to chat logs from his conversations over WhatsApp.
The 32-year-old pleaded guilty to charges of engaging in sexual communication with a child and attempting to cause a child aged 13 to 15 to watch or look at an image of sexual activity at Plymouth Magistrates' Court last November.
He was handed a 12 months suspended for two years and ordered to attend 20 days of rehabilitation at Exeter Crown Court today.
His defence counsel Mr Michael Brown had asked the court to show mercy on Stevens who 'acknowledged he had a problems with his behaviour'.
Stevens was also issued with a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for 10 years, which will prevent him from working with children and was also ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register for a decade.
Judge Graham Cottle told him: 'If you are in breach of the order by committing further offences then you will be brought back to court and serve this sentence.'
In chat logs the community volunteer discussed having a threesome with his ex-girlfriend and sent nude pictures of himself.
As part of the sting, members of the Plymouth Against group set up decoy profiles and spoke to Mr Stevens over messaging apps.
In the messages exchanged between Mr Stevens and the decoy, the conversation quickly turns from general chit-chat to sexually explicit content despite the paedophile knowing the account he was talking to was supposedly 14-years-old.
Paedophile hunter Chris, 42, who was involved in the sting, said: 'Toni had been speaking to at least 39 underage girls online and had arranged to meet a lot of girls countrywise.
'He told [several decoys] he would book a hotel room to facilitate the threesome.
'In this sting, he originally told the decoy to meet him at Taunton Travelodge. He'd arranged to meet our other decoys in Coventry, Birmingham and Manchester.
'Strangely, he had no intention of actually meeting up with any of them. We knew he wasn't going to turn up to the meetings, so we called the charity that he volunteered at called Hele's Angels.'
At the time of Toni's arrest, the charity Hele's Angels, which supports the local community, claim Toni never had contact with children while working there.
Today, Dani Skillin, a volunteer at the charity, said: 'Hele's Angels are looking forward to the future and moving on without Toni Stevens.'