George Brusby 26

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A PERVERT arranged to meet up with a ’13-year-old girl’ for sexual activity – but he was shocked when he found out who actually turned up at his home.

George Brusby was in fact having sick sex chats online with an adult member of a paedophile hunter group pretending to be a vulnerable teenage child.

The 26-year-old was confronted by the group and ended up being live-streamed online before being arrested and taken away in a police van.

He has now been locked up after admitting charges of attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity and arranging the commission of a child sex offence.

He was sentenced yesterday, Tuesday, at Liverpool Crown Court, despite turning up almost three hours late after claiming he missed his train due to suffering from a panic attack.

Opening the case, prosecutor Carmel Wilde spoke of how his offending came to light in chats with an adult from a paedophile hunter group named Elusive Child Protection Unit.

Members try to identify adults who talk to children online for sexual gratification, the court heard, with a group member operating a decoy profile on a dating site called Jaomo.

The adult purported to be a 13-year-old girl named Abbie, whose profile claimed to be 22 to meet age restrictions, but she made it clear from the outset in messages that she was in fact aged 13.

On January 7, 2023, ‘Abbie’ received a message from the defendant which read: “Hi there beautiful, can I just say you look absolutely stunning.”

There was a gap in chats, with the decoy engaged in other discussions with online child sex offenders, but she replied with ‘hiya’ on January 21.

Conversations continued on a daily basis in February, with Abbie making it clear early that she was only 13 years of age, with Brusby undeterred, telling her that he was former military, aged 25 and from Warrington.

They exchanged phone numbers so that chats could continue on WhatsApp, and by February 15, the pair exchanged photos, one of which was of his penis saying she could ‘play with it’.

When Brusby asked the ‘girl’ if she liked what she saw, she said she did not know him yet, to which he replied: “I promise I’m not a bad person.”

The court heard how Brusby had a setting applied which meant that messages auto-deleted, but the decoy was saving them by screenshotting them.

By February 23, discussions turned to meeting up at Brusby’s Warrington home, suggested by him, with a date set for February 26 as he was ‘babysitting’ on the days prior.

He said she could ‘hold her first d**k’, and on the day of the meet-up he sent her his address, asking her to message him when she had got in a taxi from the train station.

However, the decoy had informed other paedophile hunters, the founders of the Elusive Child Protection Unit, of the meet-up, who attended the defendant’s home address to confront him.

The confrontation and interrogation was live-streamed online, before police arrived, arrested the defendant and placed him in the back of a police van.

Brusby was interviewed by police and initially said he was ‘fed up of fake accounts being made up’, and then claimed that he thought he was talking to an adult.

The interview then had a short break, and when they resumed, the defendant answered ‘no comment’ to questions put to him.

Brusby was represented by Mark Pritchard, defending, who highlighted how his client should be afforded full credit for his guilty pleas, and the fact that the ‘child’ was not real.

“There is real remorse from this defendant and an insight into his offending,” the barrister said, adding that Brusby has no previous convictions.

It was said that he spent time in the armed forces but was ‘rudderless’ afterwards and found it difficult to form relationships or find employment, leading to him consuming a significant amount of alcohol.

The court also heard that the defendant received threats following the paedophile hunter group streaming his interrogation on social media.

“The defendant is the author of his own misfortune, but the criminal justice system does not rely on vigilantism, and no one should be subjected to shame and bear baiting, and bullying for 47 minutes,” Mr Pritchard said.

He urged the court to suspend the sentence so that Brusby could get assistance with his rehabilitation, but this was rejected by judge Katherine Pierpoint.

She said: “It is a great shame to find someone like you before the court facing such serious matters, having never been in trouble before.

“You told the author of your pre-sentence report that you do not have a sexual interest in children, but in my judgement, you clearly have a sexual interest in children.

“Such behaviour has a devastating and long-lasting impact on children, and the fact that no real child was harmed in this case is a matter of chance rather than design.

“You made arrangements to meet a person you thought was a child. This was not hopeful, but actual that came to fruition.

“The only reason you did not meet up was because this was a decoy.”

Brusby, of Cavendish Close in Old Hall, was sentenced to 27 months immediate imprisonment.

He was also ordered to sign the sex offender register and comply with a sexual harm prevention order, both for the next 10 years.