Man posed as boy to girls

24 February 2006 10:16

A man posed as a 14-year-old boy to get teenage girls to send indecent pictures of themselves to him, a court heard yesterday.

Gary Canham, from Beccles, sent numerous text messages from his mobile phone to two girls aged 14 and 16, pretending to be a schoolboy called Tim and inviting the girls to send pictures of themselves to him.

In return, he paid for the credit on their mobile phones.

Yesterday, Canham, who is currently in Littlehey prison in Huntingdon serving a sentence for an indecent assault on a girl under 16 in 2002, admitted two offences of causing harassment, alarm or distress at Lowestoft Magistrates' Court.

Prosecuting, David Hutson said: "Between October 2004 and the end of 2005, Canham sought the phone numbers of teenage girls under 16.

"The first number, of a girl who was 14 at the time, he found in a phone he had bought.

"In a statement, the victim said she thought the defendant was a 14-year-old boy and said he pressured her into taking pictures of herself and sending them to him.

"She describes him giving her phone credit of £5 every few days and in texts he told her he would like to have sex with her.

"She said, 'Now that I know the boy is a man I feel sick that he has pictures of me, and worried that he knows what school I go to'."

Mr Hutson said among the 20 to 30 images found on Canham's phone, one picture showed the girl topless and another had been taken up her skirt.

Mr Hutson told the court of a second victim, who was 16, who had been repeatedly texted by Canham claiming he was in school lessons and asking for pictures, but there was no evidence she had sent him indecent photographs.

Mitigating, Matthew McNiff, said: "Canham offers through me an apology to all concerned.

"He recognises it was deeply stupid."

Canham was sentenced to four months in jail for each offence to run concurrently, but consecutively to his existing sentence.

His earliest release date is September 2006.

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