Merseyside Man Posed As Teenager To Groom Young Boys Online

Smith would first attempt to engage his victims, who were all aged between 11 and 14, in friendly conversations on Facebook, before making sexual suggestions to them and sending explicit photographs of himself to them. He used false names and sent pictures of other children to mask his own identity. He would then send messages persuading them to e-mail photographs of them back to him and in some cases, try and arrange to meet up with them in person. However, parents of some of the boys, who were all from either Merseyside, Lancashire, Manchester, North Wales or Dorset, spotted the unusual conversations on their sons' Facebook accounts and alerted the police. In another case, one of the boys himself guessed the messages being sent to him were not from a person his own age and confided in his parents. One mother even turned the tables on Smith by continuing her son's online conversation with him in order to get him to disclose his mobile phone number to her, which she subsequently shared with her local force elsewhere in the country. Smith was caught after Detectives from St Helens CID's Child Sexual Exploitation unit, who were already investigating several cases reported to Merseyside Police, identified that the person operating under Smith's different aliases had the same mobile phone number. It then became clear that Smith’s victims were located throughout the UK. Enquiries led to officers identifying Smith as being the offender's real name and his home in St Helens was searched under warrant last October. Two computers belonging to Smith were analysed by Merseyside Police's cyber-crime unit and 71 indecent images of children were found. On the mobile phone of one of Smith's Merseyside victims, (who had confided in a police officer embedded within his school that he had been communicating with an older man), was evidence of Smith's attempts to get the schoolboy to exchange explicit photos of himself using social media site ‘Whatsapp’. A meeting had been arranged but the police's intervention ensured the boy never met up with Smith. Speaking after the sentencing of Smith at Liverpool Crown Court, where he received a three-year community order, a lifetime Sexual Harm Prevention Order and was ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register for five years, Detective Inspector Martin Earl from St Helens CID said parent intervention had prevented more boys from being further victimised. He said: "Phillip Smith is a determined sex offender who pursued teenage boys who he knew were much younger than him and therefore below the age of consent. Yet he deliberately masqueraded as a teenager himself in order to strike up conversations and build trust with teenagers, using the anonymity that the Internet provides, in the hope of a sexual encounter. "Sadly in some cases he was successful in persuading his victims to share photographs of themselves with him and those young people will no doubt be affected by being exploited by Smith for some time to come. "Thankfully in others either the boy himself became wary and stopped the conversation by blocking Smith, which is exactly the right thing to do, or parents recognised the warning signs and investigated further before calling the police when they realised something serious was going on. "As parents we walk a fine line between trusting our children, giving them freedom and independence to allow them to grow up while remaining vigilant and protective and intervening when we sense something is wrong. "It is a difficult balance for parents to strike and awareness of online safety is key. This case shows the importance of parents and other adults charged with protecting young people, in educating themselves about the risks and making sure they reinforce this knowledge at home and in school. "There is a fantastic website called ListenToMyStory,co.uk which tells you all you need to know whether you are a child, teenager or adult and I would urge everyone who remains uncertain about how to stay safe online to spend five minutes visiting this site today."