Paedophile planning sex with 13-year-old caught in police sting

Damian Balfour thought he was talking to a woman claiming she was having sex with a 13-year-old boy.

The 43-year-old, who has a record of child sex offences, orchestrated plans to further abuse the child and set up a meeting where he would travel down from the West Midlands to Essex.

However, both the woman and the boy were fictitious and Balfour was actually in conversation with officers from the paedophile investigation team at Kent Police.

At Wolverhampton Crown Court this week, Balfour was jailed for three years and put on the sex offenders register for life.

Prosecuting, Mr Stefan Kolodynski, said he had only been released from prison in 2010 having served a two-and-a-half-year term for making and distributing indecent images of children.

Balfour began contacting the fictitious woman by phone and text message in February this year and discussions centred on plans to sexually abuse the child, the court heard. Mr Kolodynski added the conversations were on a daily basis and 'extremely' explicit.

It was eventually proposed that Balfour, of no fixed address but who was arrested in Bilston, would travel from the West Midlands to Essex to meet the woman and carry out the abuse discussed.

Defending, Mr Harbinder Lally, said: "It appears whatever led to the convictions he fully accepts whatever he has done can never be justified and he is completely remorseful."

But in delivering his sentence, Judge Mark Eades questioned Mr Lally's account of his client's character.

He said: "It seems to be you have a deeply entrenched interest in children. Such is the entrenchment that you cannot resist temptation. I also consider you to be a highly plausible man. But the proof is in the pudding in that you committed these two sorts of offences.

"You are persistent, encourageable and deep down, unrepentant. Overall this offending is serious. You have committed these offences in the teeth of a sexual offences prevention order."

Balfour was handed an eight-month sentence for attempting to arrange or facilitate a child sex offence, a further 12 months for breaching a sexual offences prevention order and two months for possessing indecent photographs of children, to run concurrent to the other terms.

He also admitted seven counts of making indecent photographs of children and was given a further 16 months. Judge Mark Eades, said some of the images were so disgusting they 'took one's breath away'.