Lee Hull 54

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A paedophile stored dozens of horrific images on his phone, including one of a man having sex with a woman's headless body, a court has heard.

Police found the trove on Lee Hull's device after he was arrested for trying to groom children via phone messages.

Among other images discovered was one of a woman being hanged and another of a hanged woman in her underwear with a breast exposed.

In total, officers found more than 200 indecent images on his handset.

Hull appeared at Norwich Crown Court this week where he was jailed for 32 months for a string of sexual offences.

The hearing was told he was arrested by police after being caught in a sting operation by a paedophile hunter group.

The 54-year-old, of Sussex Street, Norwich, had been communicating online with members of the group, believing they were nine girls all aged between 12 and 14.

The child protection group then went to his city address to confront him, before calling police.

Officers then seized his phone, where they found the images as well as chats and exchanges with the decoys over the course of four months, from December 2022 to March 2023.

Ian James, prosecuting, said Hull had started with innocent chats which were "preparatory to making sexual advances".

He said Hull, who stayed "silent" about his age, sent images of pets and cars in an attempt to groom his targets.

He then sent pictures and videos of male genitals as well as "graphic chat" involving what he wanted to do sexually to the girls.

Of the 200 indecent images on his phone, 62 were category A - the most serious.

Mr James said the youngest victim depicted in the images appeared to be around 18 months old with the youngest victim of the category A images understood to be three.

Hull admitted nine counts of attempting to engage in sexual activity with a child, two counts of attempting to cause a child to watch a sexual act and three offences of making indecent images of children as well as possessing extreme pornographic images.

Judge Andrew Shaw said he was a dangerous offender who posed a risk to the public.
"It doesn't really matter that the people who you were attempting to contact weren't in fact children," he said.

"The details of what you said to them and what you wanted them to do are frankly disgusting."

Stephen Spence, mitigating, said Hull was a "sad and isolated" individual and had been "seeking to engage his fantasies" in the messages he had sent.

Hull was made the subject of an indefinite sexual harm prevention order and also put on the sex offenders register indefinitely.