64-year-old British Widower Gets 5 Years Jail, For preying on 73 girls in chatrooms

[teddyz]

64-year-old British Widower Gets 5 Years Jail, For preying on 73 girls in chatrooms

He's 64. He posed as teenager, preyed on young girls in chatrooms

Widower gets 5 years' jail for seeking out at least 73 girls on Net

LONDON - For the past two years, a 64-year-old British widower posed as a teenager and preyed on at least 73 teenage girls in Internet chatrooms.

British police said they were not aware of any other case where so many potential victims had been identified.

On Thursday, Douglas Lindsell, a former postal worker from southwest London, was sentenced to five years in prison for stalking, attempting to abduct one child and possessing indecent photos of children.

He had used his son's old computer to contact the girls, aged 12 to 16, in Britain and across the world.

With the details he had gleaned on the Internet, he compiled handwritten sexual profiles of 54 youngsters in Britain and 19 from abroad.

This database included details of hair and eye colour, clothes, schools, families and intimate details such as bra size and sexual likes and dislikes.

He even bought a book about teenage messaging so he could sound convincing.

Lindsell not only befriended these girls on cyberspace, but also telephoned some of them as many as 100 times, asking them to meet him and sometimes even threatening to rape them.

Even after he was arrested and bailed by the police, the calls and e-mails continued.

Detective Chief Inspector Chris Watts said: 'He was obsessive in his pursuit of underage girls, and continued to pursue them via an interactive cable channel which provided e-mail facilities after we had confiscated his computer.'

He added that Lindsell had a system of attracting young girls 'with a clear intent, and that was to commit an act of indecent assault'.

Police Constable Mick White said outside Kingston Crown Court, where the sentence was passed: 'His contacts with the girls were overtly sexual in nature and he continually tried to get them to meet him.'

Lindsell even drove to the towns where two of the girls lived.

'He then phoned the girls and attempted to entice them into his car, but when they saw a grown man in the driver's seat, they ran away,' said the police constable.

His crimes finally caught up with him when the mother of a teenage girl found a picture of the naked defendant which he had sent to her daughter through the mail.

The mother rang the police and Lindsell was arrested in April.

Judge Richard McGregor-Johnson rejected the claim of defence counsel that Lindsell, who had no previous convictions, had been subverted by the power of the Internet.

He said: 'Your obsession with young girls is a sexual obsession linked to an obsession about rape. I do not accept your actions were actions of dirty talking.

'What it was that changed your behaviour in 2002 I do not know, and whilst it's true the Internet makes it considerably easier for somebody like yourself to commit these types of crimes, you could not properly lay the blame for it on the Internet.'

Lindsell was sentenced to three years for attempted abduction of a girl under 14, two years for stalking, and three months for possession of indecent photos of children. Those sentences are to run concurrently.

In addition, he was sentenced to six months for attempting to pervert the course of justice, and eight months for incitement to gross indecency with a girl under 16. Those sentences are to run consecutively to the others. -- AFP, AP

Source:
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/top...14048,00.html?



Haiz, it is indeed very sad 2 c that after MIcrosoft's closure of the MSN chatrooms, it still couldn't help 2 ease the situation of what i term "cyber rapists". Oh dear...