SELBY MAN SENTENCED FOR SENDING SEXUAL MESSAGES TO UNDERAGE GIRL
A man who sent an indecent video and pictures of himself to an underage girl has been given a suspended prison sentence.Alan Adrian Parker, 44, sent sexual messages to the girl for two months until her mother realised what was happening and stopped it, said Kathryn Walters, prosecuting.
He had requested and received selfie photos from the girl, some of which were sexual.
He claimed later to police that he and the girl were in love and that he would wait until she was of age.
District judge Adrian Lower dismissed the suggestion that the two were in a relationship.
“You must know that cannot be right.
How could it possibly be right,” he told Parker.
“As to the idea you were going to wait until the girl turned 18, it is just ludicrous.” Parker had known the girl’s age from the start.
“For your own sexual gratification, you continued to get involved in this completely inappropriate conduct with the girl,” the judge said.
Parker deserved to be jailed not only to punish him but to deter others like him from behaving in a similar way.
But he had family caring responsibilities, the judge told York Magistrates' Court.
Parker, formerly of Fairfax Avenue, Selby, and now living in South Yorkshire, pleaded guilty to sexual communication with a child and was given a 26-week prison sentence suspended for two years on condition he does a two-year rehabilitative programme and 30 days’ rehabilitative activities.
“You will be challenged about your completely wrong thinking in relation to your behaviour and encouraged to find ways you can live your life without being involved in doing something like this again,” the judge said.
Parker must pay a £154 statutory surcharge and £85 prosecution costs and will be on the sex offenders’ register for seven years.
Mrs Walters said the two had met through computer game play.
The mother found out when she checked her daughter’s phone.
She then contacted Parker herself to tell him he had been discovered.
Parker had used Instagram and SnapChat for his messages and deleted them from his phone.
But they were still on the girl’s phone from which police downloaded them.
For Parker, Lee-Anne Robins-Hicks said: “He is genuinely remorseful for his action” and apologised to the girl.
He had had to wait two years to be charged as the offences had been in autumn 2022.
When he was sending the sexual messages, he had low self-esteem, self-confidence and self-worth.
He had been diagnosed with attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and took anti-depressants.
He cared for his 79-year-old mother who had dementia and could not live independently, as well as for his 19-year-old daughter who had autism and ADHD.
