A SHOTTON ‘predator’ who was exposed live on the internet has been jailed.

David McCullough, 47, of Rowden Street in Shotton appeared at Mold Crown Court on December 17 for attempting to cause a child to look at images of sexual activity, distributing and making indecent photographs of a child and possessing extreme pornographic images.

The court heard how two members of a child activist group had set up an online trap for offenders who seek contact with children on social media for sexual purposes. These members posed as a 14-year-old and a nine-year-old.

In reference to the distribution offence, prosecution barrister Simon Mintz said a download of McCullough’s phone found he had been chatting to two unknown males.

He told them he liked ‘teen and young’, one of the males sent him a category B image which he then sent to the other ‘thereby committing the offence of distributing’.

On August 18, 2019, McCullough contacted the username Nosey Rosie on Kick Messenger and told her he was 47-years of age and she replied saying she was 14.

The court heard how he asked for a picture, which she refused and a little while later told her he was ‘horny’.

On August 20, he contacted the account again with two clips of a male carrying out a sex act and asked if she liked it.

On that same night, he contacted the other ‘child’ who told him she was just nine years old and from Manchester.

The court heard how the 47-year-old asked for proof and was sent an image of a child, which he responded with a clip of a male carrying out a sex act.

When she refused to send a picture of herself, he sent another indecent picture.

The prosecution barrister went on to say that the two witnesses posing as children contacted one another and contacted another decoy who posed as a female adult who contacted McCullough and agreed to meet him.

On August 21 the activist team confronted McCullough at his address and live streamed the incident on Facebook while waiting for police.

McCullough was found to have indecent images of children aged between 6-14 on his phone, laptop and thumb-drive and an extreme image.

Defence Counsel John Parry-Jones said McCullough showed ‘genuine remorse and regret’ and now has an ‘understanding of the consequences of what he did’.

He added the 47-year-old had ‘taken ownership of his behaviour’ and has had time to reflect between his arrest and conviction.

Mr Parry-Jones said the incident has ‘caused a sequence of events’ that are ‘extremely detrimental’ and as a result lost him employment, his wife and his home.

The court heard how the experience ‘brought home to him’ the results of his actions.

The defence counsel added that he had ‘represented the country in the forces’ and would ‘never work in the field he was’.

Judge Recorder Simon Mills said: “You are a man now in your late 40’s who hasn’t been in trouble before this case.

“But you were nursing a sexual interest in children and I’m sentencing you not simply for possessing quite a small collection of indecent images of children but also for distributing a category B image to a like-minded individual.

“You also took the step of, in your middle age, going on to Kick and finding an area of it called Schoolers and then communicating with people you believed were children.

“We very often see stories in the press of people doing that and being confronted then by police if it’s undercover officers or activist groups that catch predatory behaviour such as this and expose it.

“I sometimes wonder why on earth people bother doing it because the likelihood is they are talking to a decoy seeking to trap them.”

Recorder Mills said the reality is people have ‘lost their sense of self-control’ and are being ‘driven’ by their deviant sexual interest in children.

He added he would take into account these ‘were not real children’, but McCullough believed they were and he ‘progressed’ the conversations in a ‘predatory manner’ despite protestations.

He went on to say: “This behaviour had become aggressive, not in the sense of violence or threatening behaviour but your loss of self-control, driven by your deviant urges, had caused you to ignore not just the law and decent behaviour, but everything you were being told in the course of those conversations.”

Recorder Mills said this was a ‘serious case’ and accepts McCullough had ‘lost a great deal’ and ‘suffered the humiliation of being exposed’ for ‘what he was at the time’.

The court heard how there was a ‘wider picture’ to consider between the prospect of rehabilitation and the adequate punishment.

McCullough was given a 12-month custodial sentence for attempting to cause a child to look at sexual activity and a three month custodial sentence for the distribution of a category B image. These are to run consecutively with one another.

For the making of images and possession he was given sentences to run concurrently with the previous offences, meaning that the total sentence McCullough will serve is one of 15 months in prison, of which he will serve half.