A court enquired why the CPS had indicted, Sean Attenborough the Oxford Paedophile with a lower offence when the more severe charge appeared substantiated.
Recorder Paul Reid informed prosecutor Honour Fitzgerald that it may be perceived as ‘possibly inadequate’ that a convicted paedophile, who attempted to meet a 13-year-old ‘female’ in a hotel for sexual purposes, was solely charged with attempting to induce a child to participate in non-penetrative sexual activity.
In addressing Sean Attenborough regarding his third set of sexual convictions in seven years, the judge remarked: “Perhaps you could convey to the Crown Prosecution Service my observations on this matter, as it appears to me that the charge may be deemed potentially insufficient.”
He added: “I’ve come across many cases like this. This is one of the very worst and it’s also the first in my experience [where] the undercover police officer has actually spoken on the telephone to the defendant.”
Earlier, the court heard that Sean Attenborough was subject to a suspended prison sentence, imposed in January when he began talking to what he thought was a young woman on the chatroom website Chatiw. He asked her if she liked ‘older men’.
Their conversation moved to the Snapchat app, when the ‘girl’ told Sean Attenborough she was actually 13 years old.
She was, in fact, an undercover police officer patrolling the net to catch would-be paedophiles.
Sean Attenborough was firmly caught in the officer’s net. He repeatedly asked for pictures of herself with her ‘onesie’ pyjamas unzipped to her waist.
He encouraged her to perform sex acts on herself, offered to send images of his naked genitalia and repeatedly talked about meeting in a hotel to have sex with her.
Unusually in such investigations, the defendant and the ‘girl’ also spoke on the telephone.
Sean Attenborough, of no fixed address, was arrested in September. His devices were analysed and he was found to have a small number of indecent images of children.
By using the digital kit, which had not been registered with the police, to contact a supposed child he was in breach of a sexual harm prevention order imposed earlier this year.
He pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court in September to breaching his sexual harm prevention order, attempted sexual communication with a child, attempting to incite a girl to engage in sexual activity and .
The judge described a pre-sentence report compiled by the probation service as ‘very damning’. Sean Attenborough was regarded as posing a ‘high risk of causing serious harm’.
Mitigating, Dana Bilan said her client had not yet started the sex offender treatment programme – Horizon – when he was arrested in the autumn.
The father-of-two grown up children was said to be ‘realistic’ and understood the sentence could only be an immediate custodial one.
Recorder Reid jailed him for a total of 44 months, including activating an earlier eight month sentence.
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