January 2017 Facebook helped catch online pervert A sports club employee embarked on a course of ‘extremely dangerous behaviour’ after he made sexual suggestions to a teenage boy on Facebook. Sentencing Michael Smith to a three-year community order today, Judge Sarah Buckingham said he had allowed contact with the boy to flourish and develop after the child got in touch with him. “In June last year you embarked upon a course of extremely dangerous behaviour; communicating with a young person who you knew, at least was telling you he was 15, almost 16 years of age,” said the judge. “It was you who started talking about matters of naughty thoughts. “Those conversations were wholly inappropriate and designed, no doubt, to facilitate some further sexual contact between you and the young male person you were speaking to”. Smith, 49, of Bassingfield Lane, Gamston, who has borderline learning difficulties, pleaded guilty to two charges of causing or inciting the sexual exploitation of a child aged between 13 and 17 years from an address in Cotgrave last June. Today, he was ordered to sign the sex offenders’ register for five years, be subject to a sexual harm prevention order and complete 50 days of a rehabilitation activity requirement. Nottingham Crown Court heard the boy had messaged Smith, who works at a Nottinghamshire sports club, after he noticed he had asked a young friend for a drink. Troubled by what he saw, the victim decided to find out more and contacted Smith on Facebook. “There began a series of messages between them,” said Ian Way, prosecuting. Smith had asked the boy if he ‘liked men’, but he said he ‘liked girls’ and indicated he was 15. Smith also said he was ‘thinking naughty thoughts’ and had discussed paying £100 to do a sexual act to him. Contact between them stopped when the boy told a youth worker at school. Police were informed and Smith was arrested at the address in Cotgrave