Former West Yorkshire Police investigator blames car-crash traumas for becoming predatory paedophile

Paedophile Robert Sheridan, who was an investigator for the force, has been jailed before for possessing indecent images but was given a fresh sentence at Leeds Crown Court for targeting the girl online.

But the 46-year-old was unaware that the profile was a decoy set up by a police in south Wales as part of an operation to snare predators trawling the internet for youngsters.

The court heard that Sheridan first made contact with the profile on August 10 on the chatroom, Chatib. She told him several times she was only 12, but he persisted before telling her that he want to see her and that he was “turned on”.

He encouraged her to shut her bedroom door, use the camera and strip off.

When police arrested him at his home on Ringwood Way, Hemsworth, Wakefield, they also found an internet device that he had not registered, which put him in breach of the sexual harm prevention order (SHPO) he was given in July 2021 when he was previously convicted of downloading abuse images.

On that occasion he received a six-month jail sentence, suspended for two years, at Sheffield Crown Court. He was ordered to enrol on a sex offender programme, and given the SHPO which allows police to monitor his internet use.

He has three previous conviction for seven offences. For his latest offending he admitted attempting sexual communication with a child, and breach of his SHPO.

Mitigating, Gareth Henderson-Moore said Sheridan was an “educated man” with a masters degree but said: “Up until his 40s he led a useful life as a crime-scene investigator for West Yorkshire Police. It would appear at some point in his early 40s there were major events that caused him to enter into a self-destructive pattern of offending.

"He was living alone and working very long hours, seeing traumatic events such as road traffic collisions. He was in a precarious financial situation and was struggling to make ends meet. He began to use chatrooms for company.

"He is disgusted at himself and thoroughly ashamed. He wishes to embrace an opportunity to deal with his behaviour.”

Judge Mushtaq Khokhar jailed him for 15 months.