Kevin Marshall 45

Description

A dad-of-three falsely claimed to be a reverend while attempting to groom two schoolgirls online. Kevin Marshall, 45, of Hursley Road in Fazakerley, posted Facebook pictures of himself in a priest's collar and Moncler coat, befriended the teens via social media, booked hotel stays, and arranged meetups for coffee or drives.

Unbeknownst to him, he was ensnared in a paedophile hunter sting by Saving Children's Futures UK, using decoy profiles of 15-year-old girls on Facebook and WhatsApp. He made repeated attempts to meet one and specific arrangements with the other. Marshall was confronted at home by the group around 9:30pm on April 28, 2025, leading to his arrest. He told police, "honestly, I've done nothing wrong" and described matters as "both 'nasty and dangerous'."

With the first decoy, he asked when she turned 16, called her "hot," sent photos of motorcycles, cars, and his shoulder X-ray after a biking accident. He proposed a hotel stay, offered to travel to Glasgow to collect her, sent train times, booked a room for April 25, 2025, asked "what type of drunk she was," and said he would "make her comfortable on her first experience with a man."

For the second decoy, contacted in January 2025, he claimed "he had been a reverend but quit when his mother died," suggested "meeting up for coffee, a walk or a drive as friends, for a chat," called her "stunning and beautiful," admitted "naughty thoughts," offered to "pick her up in his Volvo" and "put a smile on her face." He also commented on family court as "pricks who think they know better" and arranged a Crosby coffee meet.

Marshall has 20 prior convictions for 51 offenses, including a five-year blackmail sentence in 2015. Defense lawyer Matthew O'Neill said: "He puts it down to the loss of his mother in January this year, which resulted in him misusing cocaine to the extent where he found himself communicating with what he believed to be 15-year-old girls online. He is disgusted in his behaviour and embarrassed, given the nature of his offending and the fact that he has three young children. Mr Marshall has spent the best part of two months in custody. He tells me that he is using his time constructively and reflecting on his actions to ensure that, when he is released from custody, he does not appear before the courts again."

At Liverpool Crown Court, Marshall pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted sexual communications with a child and two charges of arranging or facilitating a child sex offense. Appearing in a grey t-shirt, he wiped away tears during the hearing and was jailed for three years.

Judge Simon Medland KC said: "There were two supposed children involved under pseudonyms. They were both girls who were 15, or so you thought, yet you were prepared to go to considerable lengths to arrange sexual encounters in the most graphic ways. Under an imaginative disguise, you sought to groom them in a prolonged way. Children are entitled to their childhood. They are not there to be sexualised or seen as sexual objects by dirty minded, paedophile inclined adults. Yet that is what you were doing."

Marshall received a lifelong sexual harm prevention order and must sign the sex offenders' register indefinitely.