June 2023 Pervert farmer who told boy to wear mum’s underwear when they met says he’s ‘an idiot’ A pervert farmer who told a ‘15-year-old boy’ to wear his mum’s underwear when they met has told this paper he’s “an idiot”. Ironically named Neill Hunter walked free from court this week after it emerged, he’d been snared by a group of hunters himself – paedophile hunters. The 55-year-old Rangers FC fanatic thought he was exchanging explicit sex messages with an underage teenage boy but in reality he was conversing with a decoy from the hunter’s group. Over the course of a week last April Hunter send sex messages, including the sex acts he’d perform on him when they met. And when a meeting was arranged at Larne Train Station Hunter told the supposed to teenager to arrive wearing his mum’s underwear. When we called at his home in Larne this week he confirmed his identity but politely declined to explain what possessed him to commit such a crime. “I have nothing to say about that, I don’t want to talk about it, it’s over,” he said. And when pushed about his shocking behaviour he said, “Look mate, I was an idiot, a complete idiot, simple as that”. On Tuesday at Antrim Magistrates’ Court Hunter was sentenced to four months in prison but District Judge Francis Rafferty suspended the sentence for two years. Sentencing the balding creep and also imposing a five year Sexual Offences Prevention Order, the judge told him he had, “failed to recognise that your actions were child sexual abuse.” “Let’s be clear, that’s precisely what they are and the fact that you are in a degree of denial about your behaviour gives me concern that a probation order is of little import,” said DJ Rafferty. At an earlier hearing Hunter, from McCareys Loanen in Larne, entered guilty pleas to attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming, attempting to engage a child in sexual communication and possessing extreme pornography on dates between 23-30 April last year. A prosecuting lawyer told the court that on 30 April last year, a man from a so-called paedophile hunter group told police how he had been exchanging messages with Hunter over the course of the preceding week. Posing as a 15-year-old boy called Lee, the decoy told Hunter his age and the defendant told him “that’s fine” and the messages “quickly became sexual” with the defendant sending sexually explicit images, asking to meet the boy and “encouraged him to wear his mother’s underwear” when they met. Hunter also “detailed the sexual acts he would perform on him” when they met and there was an arrangement for them to meet at Larne train station on 30 April. At around 8pm that day, Hunter pulled his car into the carpark and was confronted by the decoy who recorded the incident and broadcast it online, but the pervert drove off. The PPS lawyer said the decoy gave all the materials, footage and his phone to the police but in the meantime, Hunter himself also “made a report to police himself that he was at the train station when he was approached by an unknown male who said that he was making a citizen’s arrest as he was meeting a 15-year-old boy for sex.” Officers seized his phone as well and when all the devices were examined, the evidence gathered “corroborated the account provided by the witness.” Hunter’s phone was also found to contain three pornography images of an extreme nature but when he was questioned, he claimed that as a farmer the images had been sent to him “as a joke.” He also denied having any sexual interest in children and denied that he “didn’t intend anything sexual to take place when he met Lee.” In addition to the suspended jail sentence and SOPO, DJ Rafferty also ordered Hunter to sign the police sex offender’s register.