Locations
Greystoke Park Road, Penrith, Cumbria, CA11
Description
AN EDEN Valley pub worker has been jailed after his perverted behaviour was exposed by paedophile hunters who posed as children online.
Over a ten-day period, 53-year-old Daniel Walker exchanged sickening sexual messages and images with two people whom he mistakenly believed were 14-year-old girls.
They were actually adults posing as children.
At Carlisle Crown court, the defendant, of Greystoke Park Road, Penrith, was sentenced after he admitted seven offences, though his claim from the dock to have no sexual interest in children flew in the face of the evidence, said the judge.
Prosecutor Brendan Burke outlined the facts.
He said Walker sent Facebook friend requests to the two people who had created profiles that made it clear they were ‘14-year-old girls.’ Their conversations included references to parents and homework.
During his messages to the ‘girls,’ Walker, who claimed to be 22 years old, indulged in sexualised conversation and sent them a picture of his genitals as well as a video of a child performing a sex act.
He spoke also of being a chef and running a pub and restaurant, suggesting that one of the girls could visit it. With both decoys, he later moved to another social media app which uses more encryption, said Mr Burke.
The prosecutor then outlined how the defendant had shared child abuse images with online contacts. They included images of a ten-year-old being sexually abused.
The defendant admitted two counts of attempting to sexually communicate with a child, downloading hundreds of abuse images, including 462 Category B images, and more than 800 Category C.
He had 124 images classed as Category A, the most serious kind. Walker also admitted having extreme pornography, which featuring “extreme violence,” as well as distributing child abuse images.
Charles Brown, defending, said the distribution offence involved a “relatively small” number of images to a limited number of individuals. A single man, working in a pub, the defendant said his only real conversation was online.
The lawyer said: “He would maintain that he has no sexual interest in children but the Probation Service are obviously cynical about that.”
The defendant now regarded his online activities as a “stupid way” of addressing his issues.
Mr Brown added: “He is a solitary individual, whose life started to go downhill in 2006 when a child he and his wife had died after only a few hours.
“That caused him gradually to retire from the world.
"The internet and the communications it provided gave him conversations and social intercourse and that was as valuable to him as any sexual aspect.”
Judge Nicholas Barker dismissed Walker's claim to have no sexually interest in children, telling him: “The evidence would suggest significantly to the contrary.”
His communications had displayed “classic grooming” techniques. “I have no doubt that you knew exactly what you were doing,” said the judge. He then listed the hundreds of child abuse images collected by Walker.
“Overall, this is a significant body of offending,” concluded the judge.
He jailed Walker for 33 months and ruled that the defendant must be on the Sex Offender Register for life and subject also to a sexual harm prevention order for the same period.
Two of the volunteers from the Protection of Kids group, which confronted Walker at his home after exposing his online activities, were in court to see him sentenced.