June 2010 Paedophile jailed for chat room sex A MAN who persuaded three children to perform sex acts over webcams in social networking sites was jailed for three years yesterday. Dominic Skillern pretended to two boys, aged 12 and 14, that he was a teenage girl called Lexy. The 21-year-old then incited them both to perform sexual acts as he watched. Skillern also made MSN contact with a 14-year-old girl he claimed he was a boy called Luke Manns and coerced her into showing her breasts, Gloucester Crown Court heard. When he was arrested, Skillern, of The Batch Corner, Tredworth, Gloucester, was found to have 498 child porn images on his computer – two of them at the most serious Level 5 and 132 at Level 4, said prosecutor James Haskell. Skillern admitted six offences of inciting children to engage in sexual activity between April 4 and May 23 last year. He also admitted 12 offences of possessing indecent images of children. As well as jailing him for three years, Judge William Hart banned him from working with children and made a Sexual Offences Prevention Order barring him from having contact with children under 16 and from using the internet to access social networking sites. Skillern was also ordered to sign the Sex Offenders’ Register indefinitely. The judge told him: “This was a course of conduct. There was clearly pre-meditation and planning. All those factors make this a very serious offence.” Mr Haskell told the court Skillern was arrested on May 29 last year and his computer was examined. “It showed he had been using MSN posing as a female called Lexy. He made contact with boys aged 11 to 15. There was fairly determined effort to conceal his identity. “He downloaded a fake webcam studio which showed a young female undressing. “The victims were shown this film which they believed to be real. He coerced his victims by using this film to behave in a similar way. “Three victims were identified by the police. Two were boys aged 12 and 14 and the other a girl, aged 14. “The first victim was contacted 10 times by Lexy. “The second victim was contacted four times and coerced into behaving in a similar way. “When he contacted the 14-year-old girl he used the name Luke and she was persuaded to expose her breasts.” Robert Duvall, defending, said he found it difficult to say anything on Skillern’s behalf given the nature of the “extremely unattractive” offences. He referred the court to references written for Skillern and a letter the defendant had himself written to the judge. Skillern had been only 19 years old when he committed the offences, Mr Duval said. He had not re-offended while on bail for the past year. The barrister also pointed out that Skillern had not offered any financial inducement or reward to the children to get them to co-operate.