Hartlepool paedophile who tried to watch livestream of rape of a granddaughter jailed by Teesside Crown Court
A pervert who tried to persuade a man to video himself raping his 10-year-old granddaughter live on the internet so he could watch has been jailed.
Sick Christopher Lumley, 38, helped plan the offence in online chats with a man he believed had been abusing his grandchild.
Teesside Crown Court heard HGV driver Lumley sent the man a picture of a young child being abused by an adult with the message “To give you ideas”.
But what he didn’t realise was he was actually speaking to an undercover police officer, leading to him being arrested and locked up for nine years.
Caoimhe Bicknell, prosecuting, said: “The Crown say there was a significant degree of planning. He arranged times the child was due to attend her grandfather’s home and pick up times and suggested using a mask or towel to cover the child’s face.”
The court heard Lumley chatted online to the undercover officer for several weeks in July of this year.
That was after he had been arrested and bailed by police for viewing some of the “worst imaginable” indecent images of children.
They included pictures and videos of children being bound and gagged, and the rape of very young children.
Lumley, of The Pastures, Hartlepool, sent a number of such images with other perverts after trawling the dark web, the court heard.
He was arrested in August after his email address was traced to him. Indecent videos of children were found on his phone together with over 3,250 web history searches for such material.
Ms Bicknell added: “It included messages speaking of child sexual abuse where the defendant was requesting live videos.”
He pleaded guilty to arranging the commission of a child sexual offence, as well as making and distributing indecent images of children.
Tyler Plunkett, mitigating, said Lumley began viewing legal pornography out of loneliness and boredom and was drawn to illegal material after he started using the dark web.
Judge Deborah Sherwin said: “For a substantial period of time you had been looking at images of children and included the most serious depravity that can be imaginable.”
She added it was “particularly worrying” that Lumley then went on to try to watch a livestream of a child being raped.