Man groomed teen for sex: police

A Sydney man has been charged with five counts of grooming after chatting up a 14-year-old girl on the internet and arranging to have sex.

The targeted "teenager" was later revealed to be an undercover police officer.

The 40-year-old Newtown man was arrested at Parramatta about 2.30pm (AEDT) on Thursday, at a public place where he had allegedly arranged to meet the girl, police said.

The man has been charged with five counts of using a carriage service to procure a person under 16 years of age.

He was refused bail to appear at Fairfield Local Court on Friday.

Detective Superintendent John Kerlatec, from the Child Exploitation Internet Unit, said the man communicated with the undercover officer for three months via a chatroom and text messages.

It will be alleged he performed sexual acts via webcam and offered between $100 and $500 for the teenager to meet him and perform sexual favours.

"What's concerning is that over this period of time he was repeatedly advised of the age of this child, yet that didn't deter him," Supt Kerlatec told reporters.

"Today could have been a very ugly scenario if the child in question had been a real person."
news.smh.com.au/national/man-groomed-tee...e-20081120-6cto.html
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Note the strange contradictions in the police statements..the supposed "victim" is spoken off as a teenager who actually exists yet then they admit that the "tenager" doesn't exist and what this man was doing was some silly stuff in front a legally aged person ( and how much did they encourage him to persist over 3 months ?)

I honestly cannot fathom how it is accepted that a person can be charged with a crime because they "thought " they were doing something which wasn't in fact true. Whatever the accused believed he was doing..he never harmed a child.

And 3 months working on this ?..when thousands of real abuse case are reported annually and there isn't the money or social workers to follow up on complaints ?

He should have said that he could tell all along that he was not talking to a genuine teenager and that he was playing along to see if he could find out who they really were so that he could report them to the police.

They wouldn't be able to prove otherwise.

Proves again my comments that the Police are actually highly involved in organised Paedophile activity.

It does seem strange that a Police Officer could be credible as a young teen girl - unless they spent alot of time with young teens.

I dont believe that any sort of "honey trap" crimes should be allowed to go to court. They are not real crimes and should be resolved with a warning to the potential criminal activity.

If a crime has not been committed we are once again getting into the area of MINORITY REPORT when people were arrested because of Pre Sentiment ( Prophecy )