July 2020 Pervert groomed ’11-year-old girl’ while pretending to be a footballer A pervert who posed as a footballer has been jailed for sexually grooming an 11-year-old girl. Mark Todd used social media to contact the youngster, little knowing that she was in fact a decoy. Over a four-day period, the 27-year-old sent the ‘girl’ sexually explicit images and tried to persuade her to perform a sex attack on herself. Harry Hadfield, prosecuting, said there was an element of grooming throughout the three-day period and Todd ‘incited the complainant to touch herself’. Judge Paul Watson QC, the Recorder of Middlesbrough, said: “He told her he was a footballer and told her he was 16. I accept that there is an element of grooming but it is just an element. “The sexual activity was at the lower level of sexual activity, getting her to touch her own body.” Todd, of Pilkington Street, Middlesbrough, pleaded guilty to one charge of inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, another charge of sexual communication with a child under 13, and two charges of possession of indecent images between December 2018 and January 2019. The judge sentenced Todd, who posed as a 16-year-old footballer, to 20-months in custody. He said: “The contact between you and the person you believed you were in contact with, became increasingly sexual – you were asking her to touch herself in a sexual manner.”