Jail for man caught by 'paedophile hunter' vigilante group sending obscene pictures

Michael Hall, 53, sent the 13-year-old ‘girl’ sexually-explicit messages instructing her to use fruit as a sex toy.

Having met the ‘girl’ on 18+ website Loveoo, he made repeated requests for her to send pictures of herself in her underwear or a swimsuit. The former Berkshire man, who has since moved to France, also sent explicit images of himself using a sex toy.

READ MORE: Man guilty of child sex offences after confrontation as station

Despite attempts to meet up, he was said to have got cold feet. Ahead of a surprise meeting in Reading, he told her she was ‘too young’ and he was scared of going to prison.

The ‘girl’ with whom Hall thought was speaking was, in fact, a member of a so-called paedophile hunter group called the Geordie Chasers.

The group confronted him outside Reading railway station in mid-2018 after he travelled to meet the ‘girl’.

Hall had denied a slew of child sex offences, telling police that he believed the ‘girl’ was an adult.

However, jurors at Oxford Crown Court earlier this week returned unanimous guilty verdicts to seven charges, including attempted sexual communication with a child, attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity, attempting to cause a child to watch a sexual act and attempting to meet a child after sexual activity.

Sending him down for four years, Judge Ian Pringle QC said: “Your defence that you knew all along that the person with whom you were texting was a woman aged between 18 and 24 was flatly rejected by the jury.

“By their verdicts they found you did, indeed, believe she was 13 years of age.”

The confrontation happened near Reading railway station Picture: NQ

Hall’s barrister, Ed Butler, said: “This is quite clearly, we submit, a case of a lonely and isolated individual who when confronted with a situation that he had not sought out, felt unable to draw the appropriate distinctions and boundaries that others would do.”

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The offences did not involve a real child, he reminded the court. There was no evidence Hall had any sexual interest in children generally.

The impact of the sting by the vigilante group had been significant. Their citizen’s arrest had been live-streamed to the internet. Members of the group had gone to his village and visited his local pub.

He had to flee his home for the continent, where he had spent the past three years. “His is a life he will never properly get back.”

Mr Butler asked the court to take into account the delay in the case. He had waited two years to be charged. The first trial resulted in a hung jury and he had waited almost another year for his second trial.

Hall, of Manche, Normandy, was made subject to an indefinite sexual harm prevention order. He will be a sex offender for life.