July 2020 Paedophile would be ‘risk to the public’ if released early again A paedophile began texting what he thought was a 15-year-old girl just weeks after getting out of prison, a court has heard. In fact the person was sending messages to was a middle-aged woman – a friend of a schoolgirl he had previously tried to groom – and she posted their communications on Facebook. Swansea Crown Court heard Nathan Redgrave has an “extensive record” for sexual offences involving children. Dean Pulling said that on April 23 this year Redgrave was released from his last prison sentence and went to live in a hostel in Swansea. But just six weeks later staff became aware of screen shots from Facebook which showed the 28-year-old defendant engaging in sexual communications with a 15-year-old girl and they alerted the police. Officers from the South Wales Police public protection unit in Swansea arrested Redgrave and seized his Nokia mobile phone. The court heard it transpired the defendant had been communicating with a number which he wrongly believed was that of a 15-year-old girl – in fact he was texting a woman who knew one of his previous victims and who, on seeing his number and recognising it, had gone along with the conversation. Redgrave, of The Strand, Swansea, admitted breaching a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO). The court heard he has a number of convictions on his record for sexual communications and for trying to get young girls to meet for sex. He was put on the sex offenders register for life and made the subject of an indefinite SHPO in 2012 after being convicted of grooming a 13-year-old and inciting a child to engage in sexual activity – a schoolgirl he arranged to meet at a branch of McDonald’s. He breached the order in 2015 after contacting a 12-year-old girl in Derbyshire over the internet and he also has a conviction for inciting girls under 16 to engage in sexual activity. For this latter offence he was given an extended eight-year sentence comprising four years custody with four years on licence. His arrest at the Swansea hostel triggered a recall to prison and he could be held until the end of his full term in October 2024. Judge Paul Thomas QC said the “target” of the defendant’s “sexual depravity” was young girls who he tried to incite and groom. He said it was clear Redgrave paid little or no attention to court orders and, though the defendant’s release date from prison was not something he had control over, in his view the defendant would be “a risk to the public” if let out before 2024. Giving the defendant a one-third discount for his guilty plea the judge sentenced him to two years with the sentence to start immediately. December 2012 Jailed for sex texts to teens A court has heard how schoolgirls were targeted by a man who asked them for sexual favours after he found their mobile phone numbers on Facebook. Nathan Redgrave, 20, from Gors Avenue, Townhill, sent lewd text messages to two teenage girls after he found their numbers on the social networking site and also contacted a friend of one of the girls, asking her to have sex with him. Redgrave admitted eight counts of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and another count of meeting a child following sexual grooming. Swansea Crown Court heard in December 2011 he exchanged explicit text chats with two girls, who were school friends, before one raised the alarm with her parents, leading to his arrest. While he was on bail for those offences, Redgrave breached his bail by contacting another girl. He met up with his third victim in Swansea’s Quadrant shopping centre in December 2011 but they lost contact for about a month before Redgrave texted her again, asking her for sex. She later agreed to meet him at McDonalds in Swansea, but left and reported him to police. When he was arrested, Redgrave told police the girl, aged 14, had been “bugging” him. Judge Paul Thomas said Redgrave had acted in a “deliberate and cunning” way. He sentenced Redgrave to 30 months in a Young Offender Institute and put him on the Sex Offenders’ Register indefinitely.