A paedophile shopped to the police for suggesting a sex session with a ten-year-old boy during a gay text exchange has been ordered to seek treatment.
Jason Harker, 24, was caught storing child pornography on his mobile phone after he was reported by the horrified man he was texting, Bradford Crown Court heard on Friday.
Harker, of Station Road, Steeton, pleaded guilty to possessing a total of 18 indecent images of boys on twomobile phones.
Prosecutor Heather Gilmore said nine of the photos were at the second highest level of seriousness.
Miss Gilmore said Harker and the man, who ran a gay text and meeting service, began exchanging messages in 2009.
Harker, who called himself J, was arrested on December 31 that year after police traced him through his mobile phone number.
His phone was seized and in August and September last year, sexually explicit text messages were found on it, along with 14 images of boys as young as eight. While on bail, Harker stored four more pornographic photographs of boys on a second phone, the court heard.
Judge Peter Benson asked Miss Gilmore to find out why it took the police nine months to discover the 14 indecent images on Harker’s original phone.
He described the gap in the investigation as “an inordinate length of time”.
Harker’s barrister, Stephen Wood, said it was a very small number of images.
Harker had not downloaded them, they had all been sent to him.
He had never distributed any and had no convictions for similar offences.
Judge Benson said a disturbing feature of the case was that Harker had continued to store indecent images of children after he was arrested and bailed.
He ordered him to attend a Sex Offender Treatment Programme as part of a three-year community order with supervision. Harker must also register with the police as a sex offender for five years and the judge made a Sexual Offences Prevention Order to safeguard young children from him in the future.
