JAMES TURPIN FROM YORK SENTENCED FOR ONLINE GROOMING AND SEXUAL OFFENCES INVOLVING FAKE GIRLS
In September 2022, a man from York named James Turpin was sentenced to three years in prison after engaging in disturbing online activities aimed at young girls.Turpin, aged 39, had initiated contact with what he believed were underage girls on Facebook, but in reality, he was communicating with adult decoys operating as part of a vigilant group dedicated to exposing online predators.
The group had set a trap for Turpin by creating fake profiles of four underage girls, complete with fabricated profile pictures, and pretending to be school-age children during highly sexualized online conversations.
These decoys engaged Turpin in explicit chats, which the York Crown Court heard detailed in court proceedings.
Prosecutor Richard Holland explained that Turpin had even sent one of the teenage ‘girls’ a photograph of himself, claiming to be a trainee doctor heading to work at a hospital.
Unbeknownst to him, the group had planned this confrontation and had gathered substantial evidence from their online interactions spanning from April 13 to April 18.
According to Mr.
Holland, Turpin contacted four different profiles operated by the vigilante group.
The first ‘girl’ identified herself as 14 years old, and Turpin falsely claimed to be younger than his actual age.
He told her he was a doctor working in a hospital, earning approximately £70,000 annually.
During these exchanges, he asked her to send intimate photos, offering to buy her anything she wanted, and expressed a desire for physical affection, claiming he was very busy as a doctor and in need of a cuddle.
When she refused to send any images, Turpin suggested she should be with someone older who could teach her “a few things,” and even proposed that she perform a sexual act on him, expressing that he would “love it if you did that to me.” He also told her sex was “brilliant” and urged her to perform a lewd act on herself.
Turpin further expressed his eagerness to kiss her and suggested keeping their interactions secret, saying, “We can keep it our little secret.” He then sent a photo of an intimate body part and asked her, “Do you like it?” Following this, Turpin targeted three other profiles, all claiming to be girls aged 13 or 14, with similarly explicit and sexualized conversations.
The vigilante group eventually located Turpin at a hotel where he was staying, supposedly to meet a woman he had met online.
They presented a dossier of the chat logs to the police when they were called to the scene.
Turpin was subsequently arrested and faced multiple charges, including four counts of attempting to incite a girl under 16 to engage in sexual activity and three counts of attempting to communicate sexually with a child.
He admitted to the offences during court proceedings and appeared for sentencing on September 8.
Following the revelation of his crimes, Turpin’s home in York was attacked by local residents, who damaged his windows and assaulted him, resulting in a severely broken wrist.
As a consequence, Judge Simon Hickey ordered that Turpin’s address in York not be publicly disclosed, noting that such behavior had significantly influenced his sentencing.
Judge Hickey remarked that Turpin genuinely believed the ‘girls’ were real and that he was “masquerading as a much younger man” as part of his grooming strategy.
Turpin is set to serve half of his three-year sentence in prison before being released on licence.
Additionally, he has been placed on the sex offenders’ register for life and is subject to a 10-year sexual-harm prevention order aimed at protecting children from similar threats in the future.
