A 50-year-old man who used internet chat rooms to indulge his “truly awful and wicked” child rape fantasies and to encourage young girls to meet him for sex was jailed for 10 years today.

A 50-year-old man who used internet chat rooms to indulge his “truly awful and wicked” child rape fantasies and to encourage young girls to meet him for sex was jailed for 10 years today.

John Young also travelled to King's Lynn to abduct another young girl and her friend and then took them to a garage under a block of flats in London, where he attempted to touch one of them in a sexual manner.

Norfolk Police traced him to Kennington, south London, and uncovered Young's other offending after one of two young girls he had met on the MSN Messenger chat room site contacted police when she grew uncomfortable about being pressured to meet him.

Young had posed has a 17-year-old and asked a 15-year-old girl to get a hotel room with him.

He then asked a 14-year-old on email if she wanted to meet and have “sex or something like that”.

Norwich Crown Court heard his seized computer contained 35 images of child pornography and details of another disturbing email exchange between him and a person claiming to be a teenage girl.

The girl, whom police have never traced, claimed she was babysitting a 12-year-old whom she would provide for Young to rape.

Young appeared for sentence yesterday after previously admitting incitement to rape, abducting a child, seven counts of making indecent photographs of a child and two offences of grooming a child for sexual offences.

He was given and indeterminate sentence of 10 years, with Young being eligible for release after five years only if the parole board believe he is not a serious risk to the public.

Recorder Guy Ayers said: “The sentence is to protect the public from people like you who misuse the internet to try to engage in truly awful and wicked acts of a sexual nature.”

Young was also placed on the sex offenders register and given a sexual offences prevention order which puts a total of seven restrictions on his behaviour upon release, including not being in the company of any child unless with their parent, guardian or other appropriate adult and not using a computer.