A dentist told police he had been “arrested for his fantasies” after arranging to meet an undercover cop posing as a teenage girl.
Artur Wiktor, 51, told officers he wanted to see who turned up but insisted he would not have met with an underage girl.
Wiktor spoke to the officer, who was posing as a 13-year-old called Jenny, on several occasions between June and September 2011. But during a recorded interview, following his arrests, Wiktor told officers: “I didn’t even look at her age.
“People lie, many times, many times.”
Giving evidence at Preston Crown Court he admitted speaking to a number of people online but said: “I was there to talk to adult people.
“If you are on an adult site you expect to talk to adults.”
Wiktor, of Fareham Close, Walton-le-Dale, told the court at one stage he suspected ‘Jenny’ may have been a police officer when she repeatedly told him she was 13, each time they spoke.
But he insisted he did not expect to meet a 13-year-old girl when he went to the carpark at Blockbusters, Corporation Street on September 15, where he was in fact met by police officers.
He said: “From my point of view I appreciate this work that the police is trying to do but in this case it is a coincidence that this has happened. You have got a person who does a lot of chatting using the internet without the intention to meet with under age people. I understand from the police’s point but for me it is part of manipulation, interpretation and assumption. If you put these together and see how you view this you can make a person, create a paedophile, or make a person who has never had any interest in this topic or never had anything to do with this.”
(Proceeding)