A FREED child abuser has been sent back to jail after he groomed a 12-year-old boy and offered him cash to send him a nude picture.
Thomas Graham is a convicted child rapist who was still on prison licence when he started an online relationship with the schoolboy on Twitter and the Discord chat site.
He sent the boy £1,500 worth of online vouchers and bought him a secret phone so he could communicate with him by text without his parents knowing.
He turned their conversations to sex, sent him Gif images of adult pornography and offered him £10 to pose in his school uniform or £50 naked.
Graham, who had changed his name to cover up his paedophile past, was in the process of trying to arrange a meeting with the boy in Exeter when the child’s mother found the secret phone and called the police.
One of the messages offered to take the boy to a rugby match, Exeter Crown Court was told.
Graham has been classified as a dangerous offender twice because of his sexual offending against boys. The first time was in 2003, when he took and distributed indecent images, and the second in 2011, when he was jailed for 10 years for rape.
He was banned from any contact with children after his release by a Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO) but flouted it by grooming the boy.
Graham, aged 40, preciously of Newlands, Dawlish, but now of no fixed address, admitted breach of a SOPO and was jailed for two years, eight months by Judge Timothy Rose.
He told him: ‘You are, you have been, and you remain, a serious risk of harm to the public, and particularly to young boys. In this case the victim was 12.
‘You engaged in prolonged, sustained and clear grooming.
‘You festooned him with gifts and he did not have the emotional maturity to decide to take part. He was being exploited.
‘The one thing you did not tell him was that you have served a string of long prison sentences for sexual offending against boys of about his age.
‘You engaged in hundreds of messages that contained sexualised references relatively frequently. You sent him pornographic images and turned the conversation to discuss meeting up.
‘I am quite sure if you had not been interrupted, you would have pursued that and the risk of harm to the boy would have been exceptionally high.
‘You broke the order on every occasion you contacted him over ten months. It was just about a bad a breach or the order as could be committed, short of actually meeting him.’
Miss Felicity Payne, prosecuting, said Graham made contact with the boy in July 2019 though social media and sent 467 messages by text or WhatsApp alone.
‘He bought him vouchers worth more than £1,000, a Netflix subscription, and a mobile phone which he told him to keep secret from his parents and use of their contact.
‘He sent clips of adult pornography and injected sexual references into their chats.
‘He offered cash for photos, including £50 for a nude picture. He offered to give him a credit card with £20 a week loaded onto it.
‘Miss Hollie Gilbery, defending, said Graham had not met the child or tried to commit any physical offence against him and much of their online chat had been ‘banter’ rather than overtly sexual.
‘She said he suffers from autism, ADHD, anxiety and depression and was living an isolated existence at the time, which led him to try to seek friendship online.