A former leisure centre worker has been ordered to do payback work after he was found guilty of sending an obscene selfie to an undercover policeman who was posing as a schoolboy.

By Exmouth Journal court reporter

Gerald Moors has also been given a suspended sentence and has been ordered to work with the probation to change his attitudes and behaviour by a judge at Exeter Crown Court.

He was caught by a police sting operation in which an officer using the false name of Mark posed as a 14-year-old in a teen internet chat room. Moors started sending him sexual messages within minutes of making contact.

He then asked to move the conversation to Skype where he was recorded exposing and touching himself on his webcam for 33 seconds.

He used the screen name Old Fool on the Chat IW site where the policeman was using the username Curious Teen in February 2019. He made clear he was 14, despite which Moors carried on a sexual conversation and filmed himself masturbating.

Police found four indecent images of children on his laptop which he said had been sent to him unsolicited by other chat room users.

Officers also found messages which suggested he had tried to get young mothers to abuse their children and send him images online, but he was not prosecuted for that.

Moors claimed at his trial that he knew that Mark was a decoy and was playing along with it because he was fed up with people posing as children online. He said he went onto Skype to ‘play him at his own game’.

Moors, aged 61, of Green Close, Exmouth, denied but was found guilty of attempted sexual communications with a child and attempting to engage in sexual activity in the presence of a child. He admitted possessing indecent images of children.

He was jailed for two years, suspended for two years and ordered to do 200 hours unpaid community work and ordered to do 25 days of rehabilitation activities by Judge Anna Richardson. She also imposed a five-year Sexual Harm Prevention Order which will enable the police to monitor his online activities.

She told him: “You are 61 and have no previous convictions. The pre-sentence report says you maintain your innocence but attributes that to your sense of shame and your boundaries being diminished by the amount of time you have spent online. It is demonstrative of your warped thinking.”

Miss Evie Dean, defending, said Moors is considered suitable for rehabilitation by probation and has remained out of trouble for four years since he committed these offences.

He is a carer for his frail and elderly mother and his help is essential in refilling the oxygen supply which she relies on. He is currently unable to work and living on benefits.

During the trial, Mr Brian Fitzherbert, prosecuting said the undercover officer using the name Mark worked for the Police Service of Northern Ireland and met Moors on a chat site in early February 2019.

There was an exchange on the site in which Moors asked Mark if he got excited by seeing another penis or by the idea of an old man playing with him.

He then suggested linking his 38-year-old Filipino internet girlfriend into the conversation and in a later Skype call he was seen naked from the waist down and masturbating.

Mr Fitzherbert said police found four images of children aged five to ten on Moors’s computer along with a search history which showed he had sought child abuse images.

Skype logs were also found which showed a sexual conversation with a user who claimed to be a 15-year-old girl and an adult woman who Moors asked to show off her child in an indecent way.

Moors told the jury that he had become fed up with people who used false identities in chat rooms and said he encountered Mark a few days before the Skype call and that Mark had identified himself as an undercover officer.

He said he knew he was an adult police man when he made the Skype call and had started masturbating because he could see Mark was doing the same thing.

He said: “I could see the outline of a person who looked as if he had a wig on or a disguise. I could make out what he was doing. I masturbated about a minute later.

“I was angry and knew he was not 14 and told him I knew he was an undercover officer and asked if that was what he did. I did not masturbate for self-gratification.”