September 2006 ‘Park sting’ paedophile is jailed A paedophile lured by police into meeting a non-existent girl in a park has been jailed for six years. Software consultant Richard Bellchambers, 36, travelled to a south London park expecting to meet a girl he had been grooming over the internet. Instead he was met by officers from Scotland Yard’s Paedophile Unit. Bellchambers, of Camberwell, south London, was jailed by a judge at Middlesex Guildhall Crown Court after admitting a number of sexual charges. He will be placed on the sex offenders register. Explicit chat Bellchambers was sentenced to four years concurrently on charges of attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming, attempting to engage in sexual activity in the presence of a child and attempting to cause a child under 13 to look at an image of sexual activity. He was also given a further two years for distributing indecent images of children and a concurrent 18 months for downloading and possessing indecent images of children. Bellchambers had struck up a relationship with the “girl” – in reality a trained detective – in May of this year, and had soon begun talking explicitly to her over internet chat. He also sent “her” graphic images of him committing a sex act. Three weeks after making contact he set out to meet her in a park. Police later searched his home and found 269 examples of child pornography. Police also discovered he had told other people of an obsession with girls aged between seven and 11 and had had a fantasy of carrying out a kidnap. Det Insp Neil Thompson of Scotland Yard’s Paedophile unit said: “This arrest and conviction is part of an ongoing covert operation being conducted by the Metropolitan Police which is aimed at those most dangerous of offenders – those that groom and are willing to travel to sexually abuse our children.