LAWFUEL – The Law Newswire – A man has pleaded guilty today (Friday, 17 August 2007) to attempting to
incite a child to engage in sexual activity, causing a child to look at
images of people engaged in sexual activity and making and distributing
indecent images of children.
Richard Colin Findley, aged 43, a teacher, of Crowthorne in Berkshire, began communicating in an internet chatroom on Monday 31st July 2006 with who he believed was a 12 year old girl. It was, however, an undercover detective from the Metropolitan Police’s Paedophile and High Tech Crime Unit.
Findley used the name “Suzie” to communicate with the ‘girl’ and claimed
Suzie was a 13 year old girl from Essex. During this online conversation,
which lasted an hour and 40 minutes, Suzie told the ‘girl’ that she had an older boyfriend and that she chatted to a 40 year old man online.
Shortly afterwards, ‘Roody1’ began chatting to the ‘girl’. It was later
discovered that Findley had taken on the identity of both Roody1 and Suzie.
He asked the age of the ‘girl’ and when he heard she was “13 in August” he
replied “lovely age”. When the ‘girl’ asked his age, he replied “I’m 42
sweetie”.
The conversation continued and Roody1 then went on to ask the ‘girl’
sexually explicit questions around whether she would undertake sexual
activity with an older man.
Further online chats between Roody1 and the ‘girl’, and with Suzie and the
‘girl’. In one exchange, Findley claimed that Suzie didn’t know Roody1.
On 7th August 2006, Roody1 requested the ‘girl’ to undertake a sexually
indecent act on herself. He also sent a pornographic image of an adult man
and woman with lewd suggestions to the ‘girl’ relating to the image he had
sent. The conversation continued in a sexually explicit manner by Findley.
At a later date, Suzie contacted the ‘girl’ enclosing an image entitled
‘YoungandOld”. Suzie stated when she sent the photograph “he’s like soooo
old” and “she’s about your age I think”. Suzie then stated that the man in
the picture was “probably 40 odd” and then said “but I get hot looking at
him doing that in the pic” and asked her whether she’d ever seen a man
engaged in sexual activity. Suzie then said to the ‘girl’, how sexually
gratifying she found it to see men engaged in intimate activity and went on
to say “Its so amazing yea. When its with girls our age its so amazing”.
On 1st September 2006, Roody1 made contact with the ‘girl’ during which he
stated, “I don’t like cyber, in fact I hate it, but I’m asking you real
questions about your experiences, cyber is when you make it up and pretend
to have sex and stupid crap like that. It’s childish and doesn’t make you
feel good cos its all fake.” He then went on to say, “I’m just interested in
finding out more about your sexual experiences or feelings anyway, not fake
stuff.”
This was the last online conversation they had.
Mobile phone numbers were exchanged. This led to Roody1 sending Lucy some
text messages and on 11th August 2006, they became sexually explicit. They
were mostly requesting Lucy to make contact as he claimed he was missing
her. Roody1 sent the ‘girl’/undercover officer a total of 56 messages, with
the last being sent on 30th December 2006.
On Friday, 5th January 2007, detectives from the Metropolitan Police’s
Paedophile Unit attended Richard Findley’s home address in Crowthorne,
Berkshire. He initially admitted to accessing chat rooms on his computer and
using the name Roody1, but denied being ‘Suzie’. At this stage, he denied
talking online to the ‘girl’ (undercover police officer) and sending
indecent images.
He was arrested for attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual
activity and his computer and mobile phone was seized.
After being taken to Belgravia Police Station, Findley declined to answer
questions by the police but later gave a prepared statement where he
confirmed he had the logon address of Roody1 and used the name Suzie.
He admitted to having cyber conversations with the ‘girl’ but stated that he
believed he was conversing with an adult pretending to be a child which he
referred to as “a Britney Spears scenario”.
A total of 155 indecent images of children were found on his computer and
the search terms he had entered into a search engine included “Little girls
pics”, “Preteen pics pictures”, “12 year old girls pics” and “young preteen
sluts”.
Findley will be sentenced on Friday 5 October 2007 at Southwark Crown Court.
Detective Chief Inspector Nick Stevens, of the Met’s Paedophile Unit, said:
“Every day, the Metropolitan Police have specialist officers online tracking
down paedophiles to help keep the internet safe for children.”
“Today’s result should send out a strong deterrent message to anyone
considering that the internet is a suitable place to illegally target
children. This type of criminal activity is being monitored and enforced by
undercover police officers who identify those responsible and take such
behaviour extremely seriously.”
