William Gerald Lenehan tried to meet up with a parent to abuse his two daughters and was caught after it turned out to be an undercover police officer.
The ‘determined and premeditated’ 65-year-old from Preston was in secret online contact with the officer for two months and used secure email accounts based in Russia so he couldn’t be traced.
He also installed special software on his mobile phone making it ‘difficult or impossible’ to check his browsing history and also had access to the ‘dark web’.
Preston Crown Court heard how police officers in Kent launched an investigation in early 2017 to ‘identify and investigate individuals arranging to meet and facilitate sex offences with children’.
William Gerald Lenehan made contact with the undercover officer in May 2017 and used the email address name ‘Exciting Times’.
He had email accounts with Russian-based Yandex and Protonmail and prosecutors said they are ‘known not to share information with local enforcement agencies’.
Four days after making contact with the officer William Gerald Lenehan told him to first send a picture of a sex act involving his daughter and then they could go on to “trade some heavy stuff”.
William Gerald Lenehan suggested they set up a group in a chat room application and the defendant used the name ‘Gary’.
Between May and July 2017 William Gerald Lenehan engaged in “explicit conversations concerning the abuse of children” with the officer.
William Gerald Lenehan sent the officer a number of ‘first generation’ custom made images of children, including one of an eight-year-old girl holding a placard with the date and the defendant’s Kik Messenger username.
The images were later traced to a man in Torquay who was arrested and convicted, the court heard.
Officers also used William Gerald Lenehan’s internet provider address from Kik Messenger to trace him to an address on Devonshire Place in Preston.
A mobile phone was seized containing 61 indecent images and videos of children, including one category A – the most serious – three category B and 57 category C.
The victims were aged between five and 10 and one of the abuse videos lasted more than five minutes.
Attempts had also been made to delete the images on the phone which had been in the defendant’s possession since 2012.
William Gerald Lenehan pleaded guilty to encouraging a man to take and send him indecent images of children, distributing indecent images and possessing indecent images.
William Gerald Lenehan, now of Gargrave Road, Skipton, was jailed for 31 months and ordered to sign the sex offenders register.
He was also given an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
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