A Nigerian international student has been sentenced to three years in prison in the United Kingdom (UK) over an attempted sexual activity with a minor after he was caught trying to meet someone he believed was a 14-year-old girl in an online child protection sting.
According to Newcastle Crown Court, 25-year-old Anderson Ishiekwene, was arrested in Washington, England, after engaging in sexually explicit online conversations with a decoy profile operated by an online paedophile hunter group.
Prosecutor Cole Cockburn told the court that Ishiekwene first contacted the Facebook profile on January 2 before moving the conversation to WhatsApp.
During the exchanges, the court heard that he asked the supposed teenager about her school and school uniform before steering the conversation towards intimate questions about her body.
The prosecution said Ishiekwene requested photographs from the girl, sent her an explicit image of himself and repeatedly encouraged her to delete their conversations.
The court also heard that whenever the girl refused to send him photographs, he described it as unfair and claimed exchanging such images was a normal thing for people to do in a relationship.
The pair later arranged to meet at The Galleries shopping centre in Washington on January 10, after Ishiekwene told the girl he wanted to kiss and sexually touch her like lovers.
However, upon arriving at the agreed location by bus, he was confronted by members of the online hunter group, who alerted the police. Officers subsequently arrested him at the scene.
Although Ishiekwene denied intending to meet the girl for sexual purposes, he was convicted after a three-day trial.
While sentencing him, Judge Robert Spragg said the sexual activity Ishiekwene intended on the day of the meeting was merely a precursor to full sexual intercourse at a later stage.
In addition to the three-year prison sentence, the court ordered Ishiekwene to register as a sex offender and placed him under an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order.
The court further heard that he is also likely to face automatic deportation after completing his prison sentence.
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