A married man badgered someone he thought was a 13-year-old to send him topless pictures and called her "boring" when she refused, a court has heard. Roger Hughes also engaged in highly sexual conversations about underwear, waxing intimate parts of the body, and being a "master" to "subs" – unaware he was in fact chatting to an undercover police officer. When police arrested the 43-year-old and examined his phone they found a secret folder disguised as a calculator app and found he had photographs and videos of teenage girls being sexually abused.
Swansea Crown Court heard Hughes denied to the author of a pre-sentence report that he had any sexual interest in children and a judge told him that the quicker he accepts he has paedophile tendencies the better it will for everyone – himself included. Alycia Carpanini, prosecuting, said in December 2021 Hughes began messaging the profile of a 13-year-old girl in a chatroom on the Chat-Avenue website before their conversation moved to Snapchat.
The profile was actually a so-called decoy account being run by an undercover law enforcement officer. The barrister said Hughes talked about being a "master to my subs" – shorthand for submissives – who were "entertaining him" and he asked about the girl's underwear and whether she waxed intimate parts of her body. During the conversations, which lasted throughout December and the following January, the defendant made repeated requests for topless pictures and called her "boring" and a "s***" when she refused.
