UK Paedophiles Could Get Life for Planning Rape of ‘Fake Children’

An undated photograph of a young inmate looking out from behind the bars of an unidentified prison. Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Courts in England and Wales are to be given the power to sentence paedophiles to life in prison for planning the rape of an infant in cases where they have been caught in stings and no child actually exists.

New guidelines from the Sentencing Council will allow judges to impose a term of life imprisonment on people who conspire to rape a child under the age of 12.

In recent years police forces and private vigilantes, so-called paedophile-hunters, have conducted sting operations in which they pose as underage boys or girls online and allow themselves to be groomed by men on the Internet, often springing a trap after arranging a real-life meeting.

Under the new guidelines men who cause or incite a child to engage in sexual abuse, even where the activity does not then take place or no child exists, will face a maximum sentence of up to 14 years.

Sentencing Council member Judge Rosa Dean said in a statement: “The sentencing guidelines published today bring greater clarity to the courts on how to deal with cases of arranging or facilitating child sexual offences, even in cases where no actual child exists, or no sexual activity took place.

“Judges and magistrates will impose sentences that reflect the intended harm to the child, even where that activity does not ultimately take place, to protect children from people planning to cause them sexual harm,” she told The Telegraph.

Separate guidance is to be issued in July regarding sexual communication with a child, with offenders facing up to two years in jail.

The current sexual offences guidelines, which date from 2013, have been interpreted by some judges as suggesting the sentence should be lower in cases where the children in question were fictional, even if the perpetrator did not know that was the case.

The guidelines will also stress that victims overseas should be treated the same as victims in England and Wales.

There have been a number of cases recently in which UK-based paedophiles, often operating on the dark web, have incited adults in countries like the Philippines, Cambodia, and Sri Lanka, to abuse children online.

Last year Brian Cairns, 60, from Washington, near Newcastle, was jailed for 13 years for paying facilitators in the Philippines to carry out “depraved” acts against young girls which he watched via a webcam.

In 2016 Lee Roberts, 32, from North Wales, was jailed for six years for telling Filipino boys as young as 11 what to do in highly sexualised online chats and filmed their sex acts with adult men.