Rugby paedophile continued trying to contact under-age girls even after he was arrested

Even after he had been arrested and released under investigation, a Rugby paedophile continued trying to contact under-age girls through social media sites.

But fortunately none of the six girls Darren Courtney sent sexual images of himself to actually existed – because they were all decoy profiles created by a paedophile hunter group.

And Courtney (48) of Cambridge Street, Rugby, pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to five charges of attempting to incite a child to watch sexual acts.

He also admitted attempting to engage a child in sexual communication, making indecent images of children and distributing some of those images.

Jailing him for a total of two years and three months, Judge Sylvia de Bertodano also ordered him to register as a sex offender for ten years.

Prosecutor Graham Russell explained: “The offending emerges from a vigilante paedophile hunter group who contacted the police to say they had evidence that he had communicated with a number of decoys they had placed online.

“The communication he had with their members posing as teenage girls was sexual in nature.”

After being arrested and having his phone and computer seized, Courtney was released under investigation.

But in May this year one of the decoys contacted the police again to say that, undeterred, Courtney had made contact with the online profile of a 15-year-old girl.

Meanwhile, his devices had been examined, and on his phone officers found indecent images and videos of children.

John O’Higgins, defending, conceded: “Of course he has to be punished for these offences, which are distasteful in the extreme.

“But he has already had the sharp shock of imprisonment for the first time. He has been in prison since the 5th of June, so he has served four months.”

Mr O’Higgins, who said Courtney had lost his job as a security guard as a result of the offences and had effectively also lost his accommodation, pointed out that there was never any attempt to try to meet any of the ‘girls.’

Jailing Courtney, Judge de Bertodano told him: “The first set of offences were repeated attempts to communicate with children between the ages of 12 and 14 in order to get them to watch sexual acts or engage in sexual communication.

“While you thought you were talking to children, you were in fact talking to adults posing as children in order to catch people doing exactly what you were doing.

“When these adults first alerted the police you were spoken to by the police – but you carried on communicating with people you believed were children.

“I also have to deal with you for images you had on your devices, but what makes this really serious is that you had been sending these images to other people.

“Of course, with regard to the communication offences, there were no children – but that is no thanks to you, and the images are real images of real children being abused.”