A paedophile who sent messages saying he wanted to have sex with teenage girls told police “I’ve been silly again” after he was confronted outside his home.
Paul Munro sent vile messages to a chatroom account he thought was run by a 13 year old. But the 47 year old, from Oxton, was actually revealing his sexual interest in children to an adult who then handed them over to the police.
A judge today labelled him a danger to young girls as he jailed him.
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Robert Dudley, prosecuting, told Liverpool Crown Court a member of the group Dank Dragon, one of a number of so-called “paedophile hunter” groups active in the UK, set up an account under the name “Lucy” and began talking to Munro. He said Munro began messaging the girl on a chatroom in April this year, with the messages becoming sexual in nature.
Mr Dudley said Munro talked to the girl about how he wanted to touch her legs while she had tights on, before the messages became more explicit. He eventually said he wanted her to engage in sexual activity and wanted to meet up to have sex with her.
The woman who was messaging him as “Lucy” then created another account, this one named “Libby”. Munro again spoke to her in an overtly sexual way and asked her for indecent images of herself.
Days later, the woman and other members of Dank Dragon went to Munro’s house, confronted him and called the police, who arrested him. Mr Dudley said: “He said he knew what he did was wrong. He said he had, as he put it, ‘been silly again’.”
Munro had only completed a community order 12 months earlier after a previous conviction of attempting sexual communication with a child. Charles Lander, defending, said Munro accepted the new offences were more serious but said he maintained from the start that his actions were driven by “fantasy” and that he would never have met the girls in person.
Mr Lander said: “He has been consistent in interview that he would not have gone to meet these girls. No travel plans or the like were made.” Judge Brian Cummings said Munro’s actions were deeply disturbing, particularly given they followed so closely after the community order for his last offences ended.
He said it was a mercy that no children were involved but it is not thanks to [Munro] and he has done this before”. Judge Cummings said Munro was beginning to show signs of engaging in an “entrenched pattern of sexual abuse” and that his offending only stopped because someone else stopped him.
He said: “It appears that they came to an end not because you desisted spontaneously but because your actions were interrupted by the intervention of decoys, or others who they were in contact with, who brought them to the attention of the police.”
Munro, of Woodchurch Road, was jailed for four years, with another six years on extended licence.
