AN ISOLATED, disabled man contacted girls and boys and engaged in highly sexualised conversations with them.

Lee Challinor, 47, from Wrexham, sent videos of himself engaging in a sexual act upon himself and asked the children to send him images of themselves.

Mold Crown Court heard he even asked a boy of 13 to meet at a hotel in London for sex to take place.

What he did not know was that in two cases he was speaking to under cover police officers, one from the Metropolitan Police and the other from the North Wales force.

Police found evidence that he had been in touch with 10 others who said they were children, including one abroad, but despite a police investigation it could not be established that they were in fact children.

When arrested at his Wrexham home he was found to have indecent images on his phone and computers and there was evidence that some had been distributed, said prosecuting barrister Myles Wilson.

Challinor, of Queensway in Caia Park, who suffers from cerebral palsy, was jailed for 32 months.

He was ordered to register with the police as a sex offender for life and a life-time sexual harm prevention order was made.

Judge Niclas Parry said the reality was that over a two-and-a-half year period he engaged in "highly sexualised, crude and vulgar" social media conversations with at least 12 individuals he believed to be children aged between 12 and 15.

The contact and the sexual communication was initiated by him and the amount of communication was substantial.

It involved him encouraging them to engage in sexual acts on themselves and caused them to watch himself engaging in sexual acts.

One suggestion was that a child should engage in sexual acts with her grandfather who had dementia.

He exposed himself to those he believed to be children and he suggested to a boy of 13 that they met up in a hotel for penetrative sexual acts.

There was a significant disparity in ages because he was aged between 43 and 45 at the time.

Two of the "children" he was communicating with turned out to be police officers and it could not be established to the required proof that the 10 others who said they were children actually were.

He would therefore be sentenced on the basis that there were not children.

"You should understand that if these were real children, and it could be shown that they were real children, then the starting point would be five years and the sentence could go up to 10," the judge warned,

Mercifully, therefore, no real children were involved.

It was a disturbing case and Judge Parry said Challinor would have continued to offend until he was stopped.

However he was a man of effectively good character, he had shown genuine remorse and the judge said he could not ignore his medical condition.

He suffered from cerebral palsy and his first custodial sentence would be difficult for him.

Challinor admitted 26 offences – attempting to cause a child to engage in sexual activity, attempting to arrange the commission of a child sex offence, attempting to cause a child to look at images of himself indulging in an indecent act, and attempting to have sexual communication with a child.

He admitted making 14 category A images of child sex abuse, 20 at category B and 92 at category C.

And he admitted possessing a prohibited image of a child, possessing four extreme images involving humans and animals, and three charges of distributing indecent images of child sex abuse.

Defence barrister Sion ap Mihangel said Challinor was apologetic. He had stopped using on-line chat rooms.

His physical condition meant that custody would be very difficult for him and he would suffer.

The barrister said: "He felt lonely and isolated.

"It was suggested by others that he should get on to Facebook to broaden his outlook and that spiralled out of control."

He used other social media outlets and at the time of the offending was said to be "in a dark place" and struggling to come to terms with bereavement.

At the time he had no real appreciation of the full implications or the seriousness of what he was doing or how prolific he was.

There had been a lack of structure within his home which led to him committing the offences.

Issues in his life could be tackled in custody and there would be a sexual harm prevention order in place on his release.

His over-all sentiment at present was one of shame.