Chorley man arranged to meet ‘14-year-old girl’ at hotel after sexual online conversation
A Chorley man who arranged to meet a ‘14-year-old girl’ at a hotel after a sexually explicit online conversation has been jailed.
Anthony McFarlane, 34, had inappropriate conversations via the social media platform KIK before arranging to meet the girl.
However, the girl who McFarlane was talking to was in fact an adult acting as a decoy for a group who help to identify sexual predators.
McFarlane was detained by members of the group at the hotel on April 11 this year and later arrested by police.
More than 200 messages had been exchanged between McFarlane and the decoy.
The messages showed that McFarlane clearly believed he was communicating with a teenager, and the messages were of a sexual nature.
One of the messages from McFarlane read: “Because think about it I’m meeting an under aged girl that’s staying at mine. That’s the nervous and scary part U [sic] get me.
“If we get caught I go to prison.”
McFarlane pleaded guilty to attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child and attempting to cause/incite a girl age between 13 and 15 to engage in sexual activity.
He was jailed for three years after appearing at Preston Crown Court last Thursday.
McFarlane was also placed on the sex offenders’ register for life, and issued with a ten-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
Det Con Mark Edwards, of Lancashire Police’s Internet Child Exploitation team, said: “McFarlane believed he was messaging a 14-year-old girl and was communicating with her for two months.
“The messages were of a sexual nature, and it was clearly his intention to meet the girl and engage her in sexual activity.
“Thankfully it was a decoy he was messaging, and no one came to any harm.
“This was abhorrent behaviour from McFarlane, and I welcome the prison sentence imposed on him.”