September 2015

Sexual predator, 50, jailed for grooming schoolboys

picard

A “SEXUAL predator” who targeted 15-year-old boys has been jailed for more than three years.

Sentencing Mark Pickard to three years and four months imprisonment at Bradford CrownCourt yesterday, Judge Jonathan Rose told the defendant he had gone back “again and again and again” to internet video “to make contact with young boys for your sexual pleasure”.

The court heard that four boys of a similar age were involved in the abuse, although Pickard involved only the first one in actual sexual activity.

But Judge Rose told 50-year-old Pickard: “This was a prolonged period of offending of a most disgusting kind.”

Pickard pleaded guilty to two charges of sexual activity with a child and five of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity. The offences took place between May 2013 and July 2014.

Prosecutor Matthew Bean said the matters came to light in September last year as a result of a police investigation into text messages sent by one of the boys.

Mr Bean said Pickard spoke to the first boy via Skype and arranged to meet him at a supermarket, even though the boy had told him he was 15.

MARK PICKARD

Pickard took the boy back to his home in Independent Street, Little Horton, Bradford, where they engaged in sexual activity. The next day he contacted the boy again via Skype and encouraged him to engage in further sexual activity, but they did not meet.

Pickard did not meet the other boys but had internet video contact with them during which he discussed sex acts, appeared to send an obscene picture of himself, asked one boy to expose himself on a webcam, and described sex acts during a fantasy story he created.

He told another boy he wanted to meet to have sex.

The defendant made full admissions to police and described one offence as a “moment of madness”.

Mr Bean said three of the complainants had made victim impact statements, including the mother of one boy, which described the impact the offences had had on them. One boy was taken to hospital after taking tablets and another had twice attempted suicide.

Judge Rose said there were unavoidable consequences for the parents, who thought they had failed their children, and the boys, who when they were older would look back with “shame, embarrassment and disgust”.

But the judge added: “Let me make it clear; the parents of these children are not to blame, the children are not to blame – the only person to blame is you.”