Paedophile who travelled to Newcastle has sentence enhanced after sending hook-up talk to cop
Richard Hewitt was snared by Dark Justice after driving from Cheshire to Newcastle to meet what he thought was a 13-year-old damsel
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- 13:00, thirty JUL 2017
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A paedophile snared by Dark Justice has had his jail sentence extended for sending sexual messages to an undercover police officer.
Richard Hewitt drove from Cheshire to Newcastle to meet what he thought was a 13-year-old dame when he was confronted by the vigilante group last August.
The 40-year-old was talking to children as youthful as nine through Skype and talk rooms attempting to get them to send him explicit photos of themselves.
Hewitt is presently serving a two-year jail sentence at HMP Northumberland for that offence.
But the paedophile had another three years and four months smacked on his sentence at Chester Crown Court on Friday, the Chester Chronicle reports.
Hewitt, formerly of Old Chester Road, Ellesmere Port, used Skype to exchange messages with a nine-year-old damsel over Skype on January 28, 2016, asking her what underwear she had on and for her to send photos.
He also had a conversation with a 12-year-old through the Talk Avenue website and later Skype from August four to 8.
This was an undercover police officer posing as the doll, and despite being aware of ‘her’ age Hewitt asked to meet up and ‘be her first’.
The defendant was also messaging a 14-year-old victim from the Liverpool area on August seven and 8, telling he ‘wished she could come to his address’ and ‘nobody will know’.
Hewitt then travelled to Newcastle on August nine where he was confronted by Dark Justice and arrested by Northumbria Police, later pleading guilty to attempting to meet a child following sexual grooming.
Judge David Hale said: “You have a very bad record for offences of this type.
“You asked these children to do things to themselves for you to look at which you knew to be illegal.”
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Officers searched Hewitt’s home and found an explicit photo of a nine-year-old damsel, and the evidence to charge him with further offences.
Nicholas Williams, prosecuting, said Hewitt ‘regularly used software to clear the contents of his hard drive’.
The paedophile admitted three charges of attempting to incite a child into sexual activity, two concerning a lady under the age of thirteen and one regarding a damsel aged inbetween thirteen and 15.
He had also pleaded guilty to one count of possessing an indecent pic of a child and breach of a sexual offences prevention order (SOPO).
Maria Masselis, defending, said her client had been diagnosed with depression and ADHD.
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She said: “It is clear he is someone who fights with everyday life.
“He finds individual relations difficult which perhaps explains why he is seeking out relationships which are utterly inappropriate.
“He feels normal in the online world and sadly uninhibited.”
Hewitt is banned from wielding or possessing any device which can access the internet, but he can use library computers.
Judge Hale told Hewitt he had ‘brought this on himself’ because of his repeat offending.