Jail for Halifax man confronted by paedophile hunters after chats with decoy posing as girl

Ian Kelly, 60, was said to have started the online chat after he lost his job and began drinking following the breakdown of a relationship.

Prosecutor Carmel Pearson told Bradford Crown Court that the group had set up the online profile and the decoy told Kelly that she was 13 and lived in Leeds.

Miss Pearson said Kelly told the “girl” that their chats should be kept secret and over the next five months the conversations became overtly sexual.

In one chat Kelly, of Byron Street in Halifax, said he wanted to kiss every inch of her body and suggested he would buy her drinks if they met up.

Miss Pearson said ultimately members of the group went to Kelly’s home in October 2021 and he was confronted about the online chats.

The police were also contacted and Kelly was arrested and his electronic devices seized.

Despite being arrested back in 2021, Kelly – who had a previous conviction for indecent assault dating back to the late 1980s - was not charged by until February this year.

Kelly pleaded guilty to a charge of attempting to cause a child to engage in sexual activity.

“Of course this was in your mind a genuine 13-year-old child who you were having conversations with,” said Recorder Christopher Rose.

The judge said a pre-sentence report spoke about Kelly becoming lonely and isolated after losing his job and the relationship breakdown.

“Whether that is right or not you must recognise the great seriousness of what you did,” said Recorder Rose.

“In your mind this was a child and over a protracted period of time you engaged in explicit sexual conversations.

“Even if you had no intention of following through with that, which is what you said to the author of the pre-sentence report, had that been a child engaging in those conversations that would have been enormously harmful and damaging.”

Kelly will now have register with the police as a sex offender and must comply with a sexual harm prevention order which lasts for five years.