Chesterfield Facebook pervert who targeted girl, 13, walks free

Facebook pervert, Nathan Patrick Bray, 25, requested an obscene video of his vulnerable 13-year-old victim as well as sending her a picture of a soiled condom.

Robert Buckland QC, the Solicitor-General, argued Bray should have been locked up for around three and a half years for his sickening crimes.

But judges at London’s Court of Appeal refused to interfere with the community sentence which required him to take part in a child sexual offenders’ programme for 110 days.

Unemployed Bray contacted the teenage virgin on Facebook and she soon told him she was just 13, Lady Justice Rafferty told the court.

Despite this a ‘torrent of messages’ were sent between the two which soon became sexual.

Bray, of St Augustine’s Crescent, asked for a picture of the schoolgirl’s private parts and sent her one of his own.

He ‘urged’ her to send him sexual footage of her pleasuring herself and sent her the condom image.

Bray tried to arrange a meeting with the girl for sex, telling her he would use a condom and ‘be gentle’.

But his crimes came to a halt when Facebook alerted the police about the inappropriate messaging.

He admitted five offences at Derby Crown Court on January 8.

These were causing a child to watch a sexual act, two counts of causing or inciting child pornography and two of arranging or facilitating a child sex offence.

He had three previous convictions for crimes including battery, the court heard.

A psychiatrist’s report described Bray as having the ‘emotional maturity of a child’.

Jake Hallam, for the Solicitor-General, said: “These offence were so serious that only a custodial sentence was justified.”

He pointed to the victim being particularly ‘vulnerable’ because she was ‘so young’ and mentally disabled.

A ‘message’ needed to be sent to adults who target children on social media, the barrister told the court.

Lady Justice Rafferty said it was a ‘far from easy’ sentencing exercise.

But it was ‘in the hands of an experienced judge’ who ‘rightly’ considered the ‘expertise’ offered by the psychiatrist as important.

The crown court judge was ‘heavily swayed’ by the psychiatric report and followed its recommendation to impose a community order, including the treatment programme.

He was ‘entitled’ to take the view that the interests of other young girls would be ‘best served by every attempt being made to render this offender unlikely or less likely to reoffend’.

“We decline to interfere with the sentence, which was not unduly lenient,” ruled Lady Justice Rafferty, who was sitting with Mr Justice Cooke and Judge David Griffith-Jones QC.