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Detectives praised the bravery of child home predator Gerald Raffells three victims.

Gerry Raffell, now 74, was working in two childrens homes in Yarnton and near Wallingford when he carried out the sickening abuse against the three boys. One of the boys was molested with a rubber bullet, while others were abused in their dormitories or in the bath.

Jailing him for 11 years at Oxford Crown Court on Friday, Judge Maria Lamb said of the victims: They were in desperate circumstances: isolated, without the support of their families, and you betrayed their trust. You can read our full report from the sentencing hearing here.

Welcoming the double-figure jail time, Cowley police stations DC Martin Turner said: The victims of these abhorrent offences were vulnerable children, who should have had every right to feel safe.

Raffell abused his position of trust to commit these offences.

Even though a significant amount of time has passed since the offences, when they came to light, we commenced an investigation.

Thames Valley Police is absolutely committed to investigating offences such as these, no matter what the passage of time.

He added: The bravery of all of the victims meant that a serious sex offender has finally been brought to justice.

Raffell was responsible for assisting vulnerable children in their time of greatest need, and he callously used their vulnerabilities to his advantage in a grotesque breach of trust.

He has now been given a lengthy prison sentence, and I hope that this will serve as solace to the victims that justice has been served.

No matter how long has elapsed, we commit to investigating non-recent offences, and we will always seek to bring offenders before the courts to face up to their offending and face justice.

His comments echoed those of Judge Lamb, who told Raffell on Friday: I have heard, as we all have, the victim personal statement read out to this court which talk about the effects of what you did upon each of these individuals.

All can understand that they may feel that the sentences which this court imposes can never reflect the enormity of what was done to them.

But I hope they have at least the consolation of know that they faced their abuser in court and they were believed by the jurors that heard this case.

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A paedophile was found guilty of faking an inability to speak while appearing in court.

Convicted sex offender Jason McDonagh, 36, appeared before Oxford Crown Court on Tuesday after beaching the terms of his release from prison.

The jury found McDonagh, of no fixed address, guilty of mute of malice rather than by visitation of God under a centuries-old law.

McDonagh made few audible responses during the two-hearing.

He had also refused to speak to officers who were sent to check on him after he was released from jail last year having served a 10-year sentence for molesting two sister, aged eight and five.

McDonagh was supposed to notify police about where he was living.

Sarah Magro, a police officer visited McDonagh between July and August last year.

He had come to police attention in the spring when he was sleeping rough in an alleyway between Bury Knowle Park and the Waitrose supermarket in Headington, Oxford.

Ms Magro said McDonagh, who it was said spoke with an Irish accent, would not give his name and told officers they could refer to him as a******e.

He generally spoke in monosyllables, the court heard.

McDonagh was subsequently taken to the Phoenix psychiatric ward at Littlemore hospital, where staff were able to confirm his identity.

Officers later checked the police national computer system and confirmed McDonagh was a registered sex offender wanted by the Metropolitan Police for allegedly breaching the terms of his release, the Oxford Mail reported.

Jailing him for two-and-a-half years at Oxford Crown Court on Wednesday, judge Nigel Daly told McDonagh: You disappeared off the radar, sleeping rough and making it extremely difficult for the authorities to track you.

"And, when they caught up with you, you made every effort to avoid identification.

McDonagh made no audible response when judge Daly asked whether he wished to question the witnesses.

Instead, he generally shook his head and pursed his lips.

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A teenager fled his abuser’s 4x4 and hammered at a stranger’s window in the dead of night.

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had been sexually assaulted by Jed Denton – having been driven from Oxford to Noke on a night in December 2021.

He fled the Toyota Hilux pick-up, having told 29-year-old Denton that he needed to relieve himself.

Prosecutor Rebecca Foulkes told Oxford Crown Court on Monday afternoon (January 30) that the boy ran across fields and banged on the window of a house, waking the occupants and telling them he had just been molested.

Denton was arrested and questioned a number of times, each time denying that he had sexually assaulted the child.

After the defendant’s saliva was found on the boy’s underwear, Denton claimed that it was ‘well-known’ he used to spit into bottles.

It was suggested that the victim, who was cross-examined by his abuser’s barrister at a video-recorded court hearing last year, had collected the saliva and deposited it on his own boxer shorts as part of a blackmail attempt.

Jailing him for eight years and 11 months, Judge Ian Pringle KC said: “It is difficult to imagine the terror that must have been going through the young boy’s mind.”

The jail sentence was met with a clap and sharp intake of breath from the public gallery, where members of the boy’s family were sitting.

Ms Foulkes, prosecuting, said that Denton had ‘groomed’ the boy, having taken him out for a drive in September.

Several hours before the sexual assault, the defendant offered to take the victim and a friend out for a drive.

He bought them Courvoisier brandy and Strongbow cider, then, later, some chips, smoked cannabis with them, and made comments about wanting to tie the boy to a tree and ‘saying something about rape’.

The friend was dropped off at his home, as he wanted to use the toilet.

Rather than wait for him, Denton sped off with his victim still in the 4x4 - hired under an alias in November by the defendant, who was banned from driving at the time.

“[The victim] described feeling scared and kept asking Mr Denton where he was taking him,” Ms Foulkes said. The driver ‘kept looking at him’ but did not reply to the boy’s questioning.

They drove down dark country lanes until Denton parked up, turned off the car’s headlights and strongarmed the child into the space between the front seats.

His sexual assault of the child lasted several minutes until the boy said he needed to urinate and made good his escape.

In a victim impact statement, the child’s mother said: “Never would I imagine that my son would be the victim of such a horrendous crime.”

She said her son told her he ‘didn’t want this to happen to another child’. Describing herself as ‘proud’ of the boy for fighting the case through the courts, she said: “What child can go through hell but still wants to do what is right?”

The woman ‘prayed’ that the criminal justice system would ‘prevent this abuser from harming another child and cause so much pain to another family’.

Denton, of Underhill Circus, Barton, pleaded guilty at earlier hearings to sexual activity with a child, driving whilst disqualified and possession of cannabis. His not guilty plea to a charge of false imprisonment was maintained.

He had 45 previous convictions, including 10 for driving whilst disqualified. Judge Pringle noted that, although he was not sentencing Denton for false imprisonment, there was an ‘element of abduction’ in the sexual offending.

In mitigation, Ronan McCann took the judge’s attention to a letter written by his client to the court. He was concerned for his mother, who was unwell.

As part of the sentence, Denton was given a restraining order banning him from contacting his victim for life, a lifetime sexual harm prevention order, five year driving disqualification and he will remain on the sex offender register until his death.

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A repeat sex offender believes the police officer responsible for supervising him in the community is his only friend, a court heard.

Jamie Morrison, 33, told the probation officer who compiled his pre-sentence report that the constable in Thames Valley Police’s public protection unit was his ‘only friend’ – and felt he had ‘let him down’ by committing more child sex offences.

The tragic admission was evidence of the man’s ‘social isolation’, his barrister Kellie Enever told Oxford Crown Court.

Imposing an extended sentence of 46 months’ imprisonment and a further 14 months on licence, Judge Ian Pringle KC said: “You’ve got to understand, Mr Morrison, that you’ve got to cease doing these things, if for no other reason [than] you’ll let the person down who was supervising you and who you regard as your friend.”

Police were tipped off last April that Morrison had been looking at indecent images of children.

Officers visited him at home on April 11, when they found that the tip-off was true and he had been accessing and distributing the illegal material.

He was also found to have been in touch with what he thought was a nine-year-old girl.

In fact, the ‘child’ was a Denmark-based adult pretending to be a girl online.

Morrison, of Luther Street, Oxford, pleaded guilty at earlier hearings to breaching his sexual harm prevention order, making and distributing indecent images, and attempted sexual communication with a child.

He has numerous previous convictions for looking at indecent images of children online.

On Friday (January 27), Judge Pringle – who jailed him himself in 2017 – described his criminal record as ‘unenviable’.

“I have come to the conclusion you are a danger and an extended sentence in court case is appropriate,” the judge said.

The total length of Morrison’s sentence is five years, comprising a 46 month immediate jail term followed by an extended 14 months on licence and under the supervision of the probation service.

He will serve two-thirds of the jail term behind bars before being eligible for release.

However, he is liable to be recalled at any time, meaning he could serve the full five year sentence in prison.

Mitigating, Kellie Enever said her client had a low IQ and found social interaction difficult.

He had said: “My emotions don’t seem as strong as other people’s.”

At the age of 15 to 16, he was said to have found it easier to talk to eight to nine year olds rather than his peers. Ms Enever told the judge: “That correlates with the cognitive detail you have of this defendant and his IQ and verbal reasoning.”

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A ‘predator’ planned to meet what he thought was a 12-year-old girl for sex in the Westgate shopping centre toilets.

It was not, however, a pre-teen called ‘Megan’ who Jonathan Chapman met at Oxford railway station on September 5, 2021, but members of vigilante ‘paedophile hunter’ group Secretly Tackling Online Predators UK.

The confrontation was taped and the 24-year-old defendant recorded admitting he was there to meet the 12-year-old but claimed he was not intending to have sex with her.

He tried to explain away the fact he had lubricant in his bag, claiming it belonged to a former girlfriend. The woman was contacted by the police, who said it was not hers.

A statement from a support worker at the facility where Chapman was living raised concerns that he would not stop or ‘learn from his actions’. “He thinks he’s untouchable, which is very scary,” she added.

Jailing him for four years and four months, Judge Michael Gledhill KC said: “The message must go out clearly from these courts that those who do want you’ve done can expect nothing other than an immediate and substantial sentence of imprisonment.”

Earlier, prosecutor William Rees said that Chapman struck up a conversation online in summer 2021 with the decoy social media account purporting to belong to 12-year-old ‘Megan’. In fact, the account was operated by an adult named in court only by the initials T.R.

The defendant was well aware of the person’s purported age, the prosecutor said. When in August 2021 Chapman invited the girl to attend a barbecue in Oxford, she replied: “I can’t get there. I’m only 12 and I live in Essex.”

His conversation with the ‘girl’ became sexual. He suggested they could ‘have fun’ but added that he did not ‘want to lose [her] as a bestest friend’ and pleaded with her not to ‘get scared or show or tell’ anyone.

She was sent a picture of his exposed genitalia, with Chapman writing: “How would you like to have fun with this?”

They arranged to meet up in Oxford, where Chapman said they could go to the Westgate Centre ‘where they were to have sex in the baby changing room’.

Members of the vigilante group, STOP UK, detained him at the railway station until the police arrived and he was arrested. A knife was found in his bag on arrest.

Chapman, of Sandford Lane, Kennington, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to attempted sexual communication with a child, attempting to cause a child to watch a sexual act, arranging or facilitating the commission of a child sex offence, attempting to meet a child after sexual grooming, attempting to incite a child under-13 to engage in sexual activity and possession of a knife.

Matthew Pardoe, mitigating, said his client had a ‘significantly low IQ’ and his full mental health difficulties had not been fully diagnosed. He had lived in supported accommodation since leaving the care of child social services.

Chapman was said to have ‘suffered considerably in his early years’, including at the hands of bullies.

He will be on the sex offender register for life. The judge imposed a sexual harm prevention order aimed at limiting his access to children.

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A Summertown pensioner amassed a library of child sex abuse material over a decade – and shared one image with a ‘like-minded’ pervert online.

But the pervert to whom Nicholas Moth sent the category A indecent image was, in fact, an undercover police officer trawling the net for would-be sex offenders.

And last week, the 69-year-old broke down in tears in the dock as he was sent to prison for two years and eight months.

Sending him down, Judge Michael Gledhill KC told Moth: “It is a tragedy that a man of 69, of previous good character, with a good reputation and an impeccable work record should find himself in the dock of this crown court today.

“It is inconceivable to any right-minded person how somebody of your background and intelligence could have this perverted sexual view of children.”

He added: “[Your counsel] eloquently tells me you were living in a fantasy world.

“I don’t accept that you were at all. This is what you wanted to do.

“From August 2010 until May 2021, so over 10 years, you were accumulating a library of child sex images; each of the children depicted being abused sexually by others.

“You knew perfectly well that by being a customer of such photographs you were directly involved in those children being abused and others going to be abused.”

Julian Lynch, prosecuting, told Oxford Crown Court that Moth was arrested after his ‘fantasy’ conversations with others online came to light.

Following his arrest in 2021 Moth’s devices had been analysed. In total, he had almost 900 indecent images and films, including 192 in the worst category.

Moth, of Victoria Road, Oxford, pleaded guilty to making – or possession – of indecent images and extreme pornographic material and distribution of a category A image.

Mitigating, Lucy Tapper said her client had become more and more isolated, entering an ‘emotional spiral’ and had ‘barely left the house in seven years’.

Asking for the judge to suspend any custodial sentence, she said Moth married and his wife was dependent upon him.

The defendant was remorseful and ‘deeply ashamed’, she added. “He knows that what he’s done is fully deserving of punishment and he is at risk of going to prison.”

Since his arrest he had ‘totally ceased’ his former activities, sought support and limited his internet use.

Judge Gledhill said a prison sentence was ‘inevitable’. Although acknowledging the impact on Moth’s wife, he told the defendant: “Every day of your sentence, I hope when you ponder on what you have done you realise the one who say you love is the one who will pay the most penalty.”

Moth must abide by a 10-year sexual harm prevention order and will be a registered sex offender for life.

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A convicted sex offender with an ‘unhealthy appetite for looking at images of young girls’ was sent to prison ‘yet again’.

Andrew Boyce, 44, was found to have one busted laptop and another in working order but 'hidden' when detectives visited him at home in Oxford on November 17.

Neither had been registered with the police – a breach of a sexual harm prevention order first imposed when he was convicted in 2016 of having indecent images of children.

Prosecutor Stefan Weidmann told Oxford Crown Court this week that the internet history for the past ‘several months’ had been deleted from the working laptop.

Both computers had been sent away for analysis by digital forensics specialists. Police were yet to crack into either device.

When he was interviewed at the police station Boyce ‘exercised his right to silence’, the prosecutor said.

Boyce, of Abingdon Road, Oxford, pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court last month to two counts of breaching his sexual harm prevention order.

The court heard he had a previous conviction from 2020 for flouting the order. On that occasion he had accessed literature describing child abuse and had also searched the net for a 10-year-old character from the Game of Thrones television series. He was jailed for 16 months.

Mitigating on Tuesday morning, Gareth James said his client was ‘realistic’ about his fate and knew he should have told the police about the laptop.

“He’s a gentleman who seems to suffer from the ill effects of depression and mental health conditions,” the advocate said.

Sentencing him to two years’ imprisonment, Judge Michael Gledhill KC said: “I’m not going to lecture you about your dishonesty and your lying to the police.

“I’ve read the pre-sentence report with very great care. I understand the difficulties that you have faced over the years.

“None of them amount to any sort of excuse for breaching a court order designed to protect young girls from your attentions.

“You have an unhealthy appetite for looking at images of young girls.”

The judge added: “I can’t do anything else than send you to prison yet again.

“Regrettably that means the help you need is probably not going to be given in the amount it would be if you were at liberty.”

He warned Boyce that, on his release from prison, the police ‘will be keeping the closest possible eye on you’.

The judge extended the defendant’s sexual harm prevention order, replicating the terms of the earlier order and imposing it for 10 years from the date of his sentence.

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 A judge questioned why the Crown Prosecution Service had charged a paedophile with a lesser charge – when the more serious one was seemingly made-out.

Recorder Paul Reid told prosecutor Honor Fitzgerald it could be seen as ‘potentially inadequate’ that a convicted paedophile who tried to meet a 13-year-old ‘girl’ in a hotel for sex was only charged with attempting to incite a child to engage in non-penetrative sexual activity.

Dealing with Sean Attenborough for his third set of sex convictions in seven years, the judge said: “Perhaps you could communicate to the Crown Prosecution Service my remarks about this because it seems to me that the charge is or could be described as potentially inadequate.”

He added: “I’ve come across many cases like this. This is one of the very worst and it’s also the first in my experience [where] the undercover police officer has actually spoken on the telephone to the defendant.”  

Earlier, the court heard that Attenborough was subject to a suspended prison sentence, imposed in January, when he began talking to what he thought was a young woman on chatroom website Chatiw. He asked her if she liked ‘older men’.

Their conversation moved to the Snapchat app, when the ‘girl’ told Attenborough she was actually 13 years old.  

She was, in fact, an undercover police officer patrolling the net to catch would-be paedophiles.

Attenborough was firmly caught in the officer’s net. He repeatedly asked for pictures of herself with her ‘onesie’ pyjamas unzipped to her waist.

He encouraged her to perform sex acts on herself, offered to send images of his naked genitalia and repeatedly talked about meeting in a hotel to have sex with her.

Unusually in such investigations, the defendant and the ‘girl’ also spoke on the telephone.

Attenborough, of no fixed address, was arrested in September. His devices were analysed and he was found to have a small number of indecent images of children.

By using the digital kit, which had not been registered with the police, to contact a supposed child he was in breach of a sexual harm prevention order imposed earlier this year.

He pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court in September to breaching his sexual harm prevention order, attempted sexual communication with a child, attempting to incite a girl to engage in sexual activity and .

A pre-sentence report compiled by the probation service was described by the judge as ‘very damning’. Attenborough was regarded as posing a ‘high risk of causing serious harm’.

Mitigating, Dana Bilan said her client had not yet started the sex offender treatment programme – Horizon – when he was arrested in the autumn.

The father-of-two grown up children was said to be ‘realistic’ and understood the sentence could only be an immediate custodial one.

Recorder Reid jailed him for a total of 44 months, including activating an earlier eight month sentence.

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Image: Crown Prosecution Service, Thames Valley Police

A convicted groper continued to protest his innocence as he was jailed for almost a year.

Mitigating on his own behalf, Artig Emmanuel, 24, said of a set of offences committed against five women in Didcot in November 2020 for which he was convicted in September: “We do not even have any evidence that any of these things happened.”

He told Oxford Crown Court on Friday that there was ‘no DNA’ and ‘no identification’ evidence collected by the police, who obtained CCTV footage of him in the area around the time of the attacks.

“They [the prosecution] just skipped straight to trial,” he said – claiming that, had the victims been black rather than white, ‘it would have been different’. “White women, you’ve got some privilege,” he said.

Appearing to accuse the justice system of racial bias, he told Judge Maria Lamb that he had wanted a ‘diverse jury’ and cited research that a more diverse jury was ‘less likely to convict a black person’.

He criticised coverage of his second trial in the media and, in particular, reporting of the fact he quoted the title of Shaggy’s 2000 hit ‘It Wasn’t Me’ in addressing the jury.

“That is an unimportant point. Don’t put clickbait over the truth,” said Emmanuel, who during the second trial also cited the title of rap star Skepta’s single ‘That’s Not Me’ and quoted the words of Old Testament figure King Solomon that ‘what is lacking cannot be counted.

Sentencing him to 48 weeks’ imprisonment, Judge Lamb noted that Emmanuel had told the probation service that he ‘would not cooperate’ with conditions attached to a community order or suspended sentence.

“I am sorry that the pre-sentence reports make clear that you do not wish to avail yourself of the help that the probation service could offer to you,” she told the defendant, who spent more than 200 days in prison on remand.

“I do not think that it would be appropriate to impose a sentence of community service here in any event.

“These offences are too serious for that. They attract a prison sentence and it wouldn’t be right to seek to impose a community service order, you having spent so much time in custody already.”

He will be on the sex offender register for 10 years.

Emmanuel, of Blackthorn Road, Didcot, was convicted in February of sexually assaulting a female dog walker in Wantage in 2021. He was subsequently refused permission by the Court of Appeal to challenge his convictions.

In September, he was convicted of five counts of sexual touching. He had slapped or touched five women over two nights in November 2020.

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A sex offender caught with a video of a boy molesting another during a ‘wrestling’ game told police it was ‘very normal’ for children to play naked in his native Brazil.

Just weeks earlier, Maxwel da Silva Miranda had been convicted of pawing a 16-year-old girl he had picked up in his car on Cowley Road.

And the Wood Farm, Oxford, man was soon to be charged for a series of sexual assaults on another pre-teen girl. He was found guilty in August of repeatedly groping the girl’s breasts and private parts, including on one occasion after they had been to church together in Swindon.

The victim of those assaults was said to have been left wanting to take her own life as a result of Miranda’s sick behaviour.

Summarising the impact on the victim, Gabrielle McAvock told Oxford Crown Court on Friday afternoon: “The defendant’s offending caused the victim to become suicidal, to self-harm, she tried to jump from the third floor of the flat where she lived. She suffered from flashbacks, had difficulty sleeping and [it] had an adverse effect on her school life.”

Judge Nigel Daly jailed Miranda for eight years, telling him: “It seems to me you are a man who’s quite prepared to exploit the vulnerability of young women to satisfy your sexual needs.” 

 Earlier, the court heard that a specialist officer made an unannounced visit to the flat Miranda shared with his wife on July 19 last year.

He looked at the sex offender’s iPhone and found in his WhatsApp images folder a video showing two naked boys aged around eight to 10. The children were wrestling although, later in the video, one of the boys could be seen sexually assaulting the other. The video was distributed to three other WhatsApp contacts.

Also on the phone were two extreme pornographic images showing a person having sex with an animal.

He was interviewed by the police and claimed to have been sent  the indecent video by friends from Brazil. Ms McAvock said: “The defendant said it was very normal for children to play naked in Brazil.” He denied distributing the video.

No other indecent images were found on his phone. Similarly, there was no evidence of him searching the internet for child sex abuse images.

Miranda, now of no fixed address, was sentenced for sexual assault on a girl under-13, distributing indecent images of children and possession of extreme pornographic images.

Mitigating, Gordana Austin said her client continued to deny the assaults on the younger girl. He was married with two children and, having been sentenced to imprisonment, was likely to be deported to Brazil.

The defendant must comply with an indefinite restraining order banning him from contact with the younger victim, an indefinite sexual harm prevention order and will be on the sex offender register for life. 

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‘Honest’ pervert David Jones candidly admitted to using his internet-enabled television to look at 12-year-old girls online.

The 34-year-old had switched to watching the internet pornography on his ‘Smart TV’ after police confiscated his PlayStation4 last October, Oxford Crown Court heard.

That games console was seized when police made an unannounced visit to his Oxford home – a month after his release from prison on licence – to find him pleasuring himself while watching X-rated material through his PlayStation.

On a repeat visit more than nine months later, on July 10, Jones told officers from Thames Valley Police’s public protection department that he did not have internet devices in his property as he ‘didn’t trust himself’ not to look at indecent images of children.

When detectives asked him about his ‘Smart TV’ he became ‘visibly nervous’, prosecutor Michael Stradling said.

The television had an internet browser installed and, when the officers checked the browser history, found that all entries before the early hours of that morning had been deleted.

The results that remained were all for ‘pornography’ websites and included entries for ‘young models’.

Confronted with the web history, Jones admitted that he had been using the TV to access both adult pornography and illegal indecent images of children since the cops took his PS4 in October 2021. The youngest girl in the illegal images he had looked at ‘appeared to him to be 12-13 years of age’.

Jones, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty at the magistrates’ court last month to breaching his sexual harm prevention order. 

 He had three previous convictions, all for either looking at indecent images of breaching the court order. He had been recalled to prison to serve out the remainder of a jail term originally imposed in 2020.

Mitigating, Emma Hornby said: “At the age of 34, Mr Jones is ashamed of what he’s done and remorseful for his actions, as demonstrated by his admissions and early guilty pleas.”

At the time of the most recent offence he had been isolated and turned to looking at the disgusting images. “He doesn’t want prison to be a revolving door for him. He wants to seek support,” his barrister added.

Judge Nigel Daly blew out his cheeks then shook his head in obvious bewilderment before telling Jones: “You were in front of me in November 2020 when I sentenced you. You have now breached this sexual harm prevention order - again.”

He jailed the defendant for 16 months. 

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A teacher was filmed performing a sex act whilst on a call to who he thought was a 12-year-old girl - before asking her how she felt about starting year eight.

Paul Corrie, 60, quit his job as headteacher of John Mason School, Oxford, in 2007 to return to the classroom.

He met the 'girl' on website Chat Avenue Teen Chat at the end of the summer holidays last year - not realising it was an undercover police officer.

When he was arrested little more than a week later, he confessed to receiving web links to indecent images of children online.

Corrie later admitted to the probation officer that he had 'felt undervalued, unappreciated and unfulfilled' at his job.

On Monday the Judge imposed a 10-year sexual harm prevention order on Corrie and sentenced him to a year in prison - meaning he will be a registered sex offender for a decade.

Judge Maria Lamb acknowledged that the jail term would impact his wife and parents, who relied on him for support, but told the defendant: 'I cannot ignore the fact of the seriousness of this type of offending and in my view the only appropriate punishment here can be achieved by a sentence of immediate custody.'

Corrie met his 'victim' on Chat Avenue on August 17 last year.

Under the username 'SportyUKGuy', the dad told the 'girl' he was 36-years-old.

Informed by the police officer operating the decoy account that she was only 12, he replied: 'Nice, what do you look like?'

Their conversation moved to SnapChat, where 'SportyUKGuy's username was later matched to Corrie's mobile phone number.

Over the next week, he sent a number of images of himself in boxer shorts, of his naked genitalia and video-called the 'girl' while performing a sex act on himself.

Amidst other 'sexualised messages', the ex-headteacher asked the 'girl' - 'what school year she's going into and how she feels about going into year eight'.

He was arrested on September 1, immediately taking responsibility for his actions and telling the officers: 'It's true.'

Checks of his phone and computer showed he had six indecent images in the worst category, including one showing the rape of a girl estimated to be aged between two and four.

He had five indecent images and videos in category C.

These types of inappropriate images come under three categories: category A involves penetrative sexual activity, sexual activity with an animal or sadism.

Category B features images involving non-penetrative sexual activity, and category C is indecent images not falling in categories A or B.

Corrie was also found to have searched for key phrases favoured by paedophiles and there was evidence of hyperlinks being saved for favourite websites from 2017.

Corrie pleaded guilty at the magistrates' court to attempted sexual communication with a child, attempting to get a child to look at an image of sexual activity and possession of indecent images of children.

Mitigating, Kellie Enever said her client had no previous convictions, supported his wife and elderly parents, and had lived a 'good life' until that point.

She said since his arrest, he had undergone counselling with specialist charity the Lucy Faithfull Foundation.

A probation report assessed him as a medium risk of causing serious harm to children.

The offending is understood to have been completely unconnected to his work as a teacher.

A spokeswoman for UTC Oxfordshire, where Corrie was working as a maths teacher until his dismissal last September, said: 'Once we became aware of this matter, our safeguarding procedures were followed and we are satisfied that none of the children at the school were at any risk.'

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