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.
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Police executed a search warrant at Hughes' house in Swansea in February 2022 and seized two mobile phones and a laptop computer. The court heard that when the defendant's Samsung phone was examined officers found a hidden storage folder disguised as a calculator app and they recovered more than two dozen indecent photographs and videos from the device including three in Category A showing the most serious kinds of sexual abuse. They also found two images showing bestiality. Hughes answered "no comment" to all questions asked in interview
Roger Hughes, now of Lon Eglwys, Llanelli, had previously pleaded guilty to attempted sexual communications with a child, possession of extreme pornography, and three counts of making – that is possessing – indecent images of Categories A, B, and C when he appeared in the dock for sentencing. He has no previous convictions.
John Allchurch, for Hughes, said the defendant works as a courier on a self-employed basis and said that as a result of the offending he was now separated from his wife. The advocate said it was accepted the case crossed the custody threshold but he invited the court to follow the recommendations of the pre-sentence report.
Judge Paul Thomas KC said he could not accept the assertions made by Hughes in his interview with the author of the pre-sentence report that he had no sexual interest in children and he told the defendant that the quicker he accepted he had paedophile tendencies the better it would be for everyone. The judge said it was clear Hughes had a "deep-seated sexual perversion" and was attracted to young teenage girls and had an interest in being dominant over sexual partners – something the judge told the man in the dock "is probably a reflection of the inadequacies in your life".
Judge Thomas said the appropriate sentence on the guidelines after trial would be 15 months in prison. With the required one-third discount for Hughes' guilty pleas that was reduced to 10 months in prison which was suspended for two years. The defendant was ordered to complete the Mapps for change sex offenders programme and 200 hours of unpaid work and he will be a registered sex offender for the next 10 years and was also made the subject of a sexual harm prevention order for the same length of time.
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