A Nigerian international student has been sentenced to three years in prison after attempting to meet someone he believed was a 14-year-old girl for sexual activity, only to discover the online profile was operated by a child protection group.
The 25-year-old, Anderson Ishiekwene, was convicted at Newcastle Crown Court after being arrested in Washington, England, eight days after initiating sexually explicit conversations with the decoy profile.
According to prosecutor Cole Cockburn, Ishiekwene first contacted the Facebook account on January 2 before moving the conversation to WhatsApp.
During their exchanges, he asked questions about the girl’s school and school uniform before steering the conversation toward sexually explicit topics.
The court heard that he requested photographs from the supposed teenager and also sent an explicit image of himself.
Prosecutors said Ishiekwene repeatedly encouraged the girl to delete their conversations and attempted to persuade her to send intimate photographs.
According to Cockburn, whenever the girl refused, Ishiekwene complained that it was “unfair” and insisted that exchanging such images was “a normal thing for people to do in a relationship.”
The pair later agreed to meet at The Galleries shopping centre in Washington on January 10 after Ishiekwene allegedly told the girl he wanted to kiss and sexually touch her “like lovers.”
However, upon arriving at the agreed location by bus, he was confronted by members of the online child protection group, who alerted the police. He was subsequently arrested.
Although Ishiekwene denied intending to meet the girl for sexual purposes, a jury found him guilty after a three-day trial.
While delivering the sentence, Judge Robert Spragg ruled that the sexual activity Ishiekwene intended during the planned meeting was only a “precursor” to full sexual intercourse at a later stage.
In addition to the three-year prison term, the court ordered that Ishiekwene be placed on the sex offenders register and made subject to an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
The court also heard that he is expected to face automatic deportation proceedings after completing his prison sentence.
