Police uncovered child porn after man groomed 12-year-old boy

Nottingham Crown Court heard Stewart Mee entered a ‘Meet Me’ chat room on July 4, 2020, at about at 4.25am, and exchanged naked pictures with the boy before starting a video chat, but police were told about the encounter.

Mee, aged 55, ‘knew who he was talking to and what he wanted’ said Judge Rosalind Coe KC, adding the episode was ‘part and parcel of his sexual interest in children’.

He pleaded guilty to inciting a child to engage in sex activity and engaging in sexual communication when he appeared at the magistrates' court.

And he later admitted five counts of making indecent, prohibited and extreme images, said prosecutor Alan Murphy.

Police arrested him at his home in Harworth, in November 2021, and seized his computer.

It contained 74 category A still images of children aged between two and 15, 84 category B of children aged four-14 and 566 category C images, where the children were aged between six and eight.

Police also found 92 prohibited images, mainly of girls aged between three and 13, and 3,704 extreme images of adults having sex with a variety of animals, all downloaded between January 2012 and December 2014.

Mee, now of Festival Avenue, Doncaster, admitted having a sexual interest in children and told police ‘he wanted to get it out of his head’.

Digby Johnson, mitigating, said Mee, of previous good character, became interested in the images through conversations with workmates, but later made ‘a very conscious decision to pull away from it’ and deleted them.

“He thought that was an end to it all and he got on with his life,” said Mr Johnson.

However, during the lockdown, ‘when he found himself with a lot of time on his hands, he got into chat rooms’.

“He found himself in that position and yielded to temptation. if I were to say the devil makes work for idle hands it would be truer in this case than in many others.”

Mee was jailed for a total of two years and 10 months and given an indefinite sexual harm prevention order.