A lonely middle-aged man arranged to meet a 14-year-old ‘boy’ he met on hook-up app Grindr near the Kassam Stadium, a court heard.

But the ‘boy’ with whom David Pickford swapped sexually-explicit messages in the hours before the proposed meeting on October 14, 2020, was an undercover police officer trawling the net for predatory paedophiles.

His arrest and the seizure of his phone led police to uncover his stash of indecent images of children as well as extreme pornographic material showing people having sex with animals.

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Jailing him for two-and-a-half years, Judge Michael Gledhill QC told the Oxford man: “I am shocked that a man of 55 years of age with your background should be appearing in this court.”

He added: “It is extremely disturbing to read these messages you sent over just a few hours [before the meeting]; quite blatant sexual suggestions of what you wanted to do to that child.

“Within hours on the very same day you were committing charges seven and eight namely engaging in sexual communications with a child of only 14 and making arrangements to meet him later in the day following grooming.”

Mitigating, Richard Davies told the judge his client was ‘remorseful and ashamed’ of his actions.

Although the images had been collected over a longer period, the Grindr meeting took place during the pandemic. Pickford was a ‘lonely’ man and not an ‘individual who has a large number of friends’.

Since his arrest, the man had ‘tried to behave in a better way’ and had sought professional help.

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Judge Gledhill questioned the ‘totally unacceptable’ delay in the case coming to court.

It had taken almost a year for Pickford’s phone to be downloaded and for him to be interviewed a second time.

“I have said on a number of occasions in this court that the time it takes to get that is too long and that something ought to be done about it,” the judge said of the process of interrogating the phone.

But he added that, after Pickford was interviewed a second time by the police, it took six months for him to be sent a letter informing him he was being charged and summonsing him to court. Judge Gledhill said he was given ‘no explanation’ for the delay.

Pickford, of Court Farm Road, Rose Hill, pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to attempting to arranging the commission of a child sex offence, meeting a child following grooming, inciting a child to engage in sexual activity, making indecent images of children and possession of prohibited images and extreme pornography.

He was given a seven year sexual harm prevention order and will be on the sex offender register for life.

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This story was written by Tom Seaward. He joined the team in 2021 as Oxfordshire's court and crime reporter.  

To get in touch with him email: Tom.Seaward@newsquest.co.uk

Follow him on Twitter: @t_seaward