A depraved man who preyed upon a vulnerable 14-year-old girl and planned to have sex with her has been jailed.
David Barnes, 59, was exposed after a group of paedophile hunters entrapped him and snared him at a location he planned to meet his victim.
Sick Barnes, was arrested by police after being held by the ‘Predators Exposed Sting Team’.
The girl Barnes was grooming online was in fact an adult member of the group, and was created with a very vulnerable profile.
Barnes was told by the girl that her mother was an alcoholic, and that her father had died years earlier.
Barnes, from Bury, had sexualised chats with the girl online, and said he would ‘take her virginity’.
A judge accepted it was an ‘aberration’ for Barnes, but said it was ‘very serious’ offence and jailed him for 16 months.
Prosecutors said it was clear that Barnes was ‘fully aware’ that the ‘girl’ was 14.
The ‘vulnerable’ girl had told him that her mother was an alcoholic, and that her father had died years earlier.
Barnes told her that he would ‘like to spend time’ with her, ‘kissing her all over her body’.
“He told her that kissing her body, in his words, was not a crime,” prosecutor Mark Kellet said.
Mr Kellet said Barnes also spoke about sexual activity after she had turned 16, and asked ‘if she would wait for him’.
In one chat, Barnes said he wished she was 16, and telling how he would ‘take her virginity’.
Barnes said he wanted to meet up with her, and the girl said she was ‘nervous’.
“Ok leave it sweet, it’s up to you,” he said.
But a meeting was arranged in June last year, when the ‘girl’ was set to meet him in Piccadilly Gardens.
In the days prior to the scheduled meeting, the conversation became ‘more overtly sexual’, Mr Kellet said.
The court heard how Barnes received a ‘fairly unwelcome reception’ in Piccadilly Gardens.
He was arrested and admitted the offences in interview.
“You are a mature man of 59 years, you have no convictions since 2006, and nothing of a sexual nature,” Judge John Edwards told him at a Minshull Street Crown Court sentencing hearing.
“Whilst you were entrapped and indeed humiliated in your chosen meeting place in Piccadilly Gardens...as far as you were concerned, you were going to indulge yourself sexually with a real person.
“She presented to you as vulnerable, and you were only too willing to exploit that situation.”
Barnes, of of Glenboro Avenue, Bury, represented himself at the hearing.
He pleaded guilty to attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child, and attempting to meet a child following grooming.
He must sign the sex offender’s register for 10 years, and a sexual harm prevention order was imposed for the same period.
