Internet pervert sent sexualised messages about 'seven-year-old'

HE THOUGHT POLICE DECOY WAS HER MUM

- By MARK NAYLOR

AN internet pervert exchanged explicit sexualised messages during a series of "sinister" encrypted interactions with someone he thought was a single mother who had a seven-year-old daughter.

Anthony Hales earlier communicated with the woman on a social networking site for the "fetish and kink community".

But he got a nasty shock when he suddenly discovered the woman and the girl did not even exist and that really it was an undercover police officer, Hull Crown Court heard.

Hales, 66, of Buttfield Road, Hessle, admitted publishing an obscene article, involving an internet conversation about the rape of a seven-year-old child, between February 12 and March 30, 2023.

He also admitted two offences of making indecent images of children and another of possessing extreme pornographic images of bestiality. Judge Mark Bury said the offences came to the attention of the police because there was a covert online operation involving a decoy profile of a single mother with a seven-year-old daughter. "You interacted with that decoy for about a month or two on online platforms," said Judge Bury.