A paedophile performed a sex act during a 19 minute Skype call with an account he thought was run by a 12-year-old girl.
Yet dad Andrew McMullen was actually talking to a police officer when he sent a series of vile messages asking them to perform sex acts and encouraging them to engage in sexual activity.
The 53-year-old was jailed by a judge at Liverpool Crown Court yesterday after admitting a range of sexual offences.
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Nardeen Nemat, prosecuting, told the court McMullen had begun sending messages to an account run by a police officer under the name “Izzy” on a chat site in May this year. Ms Nemat said: “The officer logged onto a chat site called ChatiW under the user “Year8off”. He used a profile pic of a 18-year-old female, which was the youngest option on the drop down menu on the platform.
“Around 12 minutes later ‘Izzy’ received a message from a user, ‘Wirral xx’, a 53-year-old male, now known to be the defendant. His message said ‘watch me’. Izzy replied ‘no thanks’, to which the defendant said ‘shame give good show, make you horny, big c***. Izzy told the defendant she was not 18.”
McMullen then continued to message the account, asking to be added and skype and asking “Izzy” to “watch him”. He then asked for pictures of “Izzy” naked. Eventually, after adding the account on Skype and after “Izzy” reminded McMullen she was 12 years old, he sent a naked picture of himself and then sent a clip of him performing a sex act.
He then sent a webcam broadcast to the police officer’s Skype account which saw him perform a sex act for 19 minutes and 44 seconds. Other messages were then sent to the account before he told “Izzy” to “delete chat so no one sees”.
In the following days, McMullen messaged the account further. Later in May, police arrested McMullen at his home address and seized a phone which they later found had 272 indecent images of children, including 157 that fell into the most serious Category A.
He later pleaded guilty to possession of indecent images, inciting a child to engage in sexual communication and inciting a child to watch sexual acts. Bernice Campbell, defending, said McMullen had later expressed disgust with his actions in interviews with the probation service. In one interview he said: “If she was a real child I would have destroyed her life.”
The court heard McMullen later said he had been addicted to online chat platforms at the time of the offending. Judge Gary Woodhall said that while he was speaking to a decoy, the impact of actions like McMullen’s had a catastrophic impact on real children every day.
He said: “That is why this offending is so serious. Had this been a daughter, your daughter, who had been exposed to this with someone else, it would have had a devastating impact.” McMullen, of Old Greasby Road, was jailed for two years and nine months.
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