A Co Down creep snared in a paedophile hunter sting when he thought he was having online sex chats with a teenage girl has walked free from court with a suspended jail sentence.
Newry Magistrates Court heard on Friday how police were called to the home of Daniel Buck Piper-Clark on 11 October 2019 after he was caught having sexualised online chats.
While he believed he was chatting with a 14-year-old schoolgirl, a prosecuting lawyer told the court it was in fact a decoy from online paedophile hunter group called NONCE.
Members of that group were standing outside the home of Piper-Clark when officers arrived and they handed police a bundle of screenshots from chats involving him.
The lawyer described how Piper-Clark was told she was only 14 but despite that he “continued asking for photographs,” asked Talia “what she was wearing” and told her he wanted to see her in her underwear.
Arrested and interviewed Piper-Clark, from Sleepy Valley in Rathfriland, accepted everything that had been said but claimed “he got no sexual gratification” from it.
He further claimed, the court heard, that it was actually him who was “trying to expose Talia as a paedophile” but in his plea in mitigation, defence counsel Justin Byrne said Piper-Clark now accepted his guilt.
Piper-Clark had earlier entered a guilty plea to a single count of attempted sexual communication with ‘Talia’ between April 22 2019 and the October 11 2019 in that for the purposes of obtaining sexual gratification, he engaged in sexual communication with her.
Mr Byrne told the court Piper-Clark was originally from Great Yarmouth “and had moved her with his partner, now ex-partner” but that since the offences, he had not committed any further crimes.
Sentencing the pervert, District Judge Eamon King said given the fact he was not suitable for either probation or community service, “I’m minded to impose a suspended sentence.”
Imposing a three month sentence which he suspended for two years, Judge King said it was an important matter that “no further offending has been detected” in the five years since the offences. He was also ordered to sign the police sex offenders register for seven years.