Pensioner offered to bring “girl, 12”, McDonalds to the sex meeting

Frederick Cottam believed he arranged a sex rendezvous with a 12-year-old girl after days of vile explicit conversations and sending illegal photos.

The 75-year-old great-grandfather actually spoke to an undercover cop responsible for catching perverts demonstrating their sexual interest in children online.

That’s a category Cottam falls into as a judge tells him he has a “deep-seated issue regarding his interest in underage children.”

The defendant was charged with arranging or facilitating the commission of child molestation, attempting to get a child to engage in sexual activity and attempting to observe sexual communication with a child, and he appeared at Liverpool Crown Court via video link from HMP Altcourse to be sentenced on Friday 01/27

The court heard how the crimes happened between late November and early December last year.

Cottam was speaking to what he assumed was a 12-year-old girl named Izzy, but this decoy profile was actually being run by an undercover cop tasked with identifying online criminals who have a sexual interest in have children.

Around 11am on November 28th, “Izzy” received a message from Cottam under the username WarBiker on social media platform ChatIW.

She said she was doing homework, to which the defendant replied that he was “horny and lonely”.

When the “girl” told him to speak to an adult, the defendant asked her how good she was at keeping secrets from her parents.

Cottam asked if they could switch to Kik Messenger so they could exchange photos, to which the girl agreed, prompting him to send a picture of himself.

After Cottam sent a clothed photo of her, she called the girl “pretty” and commented on the size of her boobs.

He asked her if she’d like to see a photo of his penis and then sent her one of him lying naked in bed, later stating he was going to see Preston in person to “show her what it’s about.” it’s about sex”.

They arranged to meet at a certain park next to the duck pond “where they wouldn’t be seen” and promised to bring her a McDonalds and that they would have sex.

The defendant discussed the things he would do to her and what he wanted from her, but the night before he said he could no longer walk due to an illness in the family and they stopped speaking.

Frederick Cottam was imprisoned at Liverpool Crown Court

The court heard that since May 2018, Cottam had a previous conviction for a similar offense of attempting to meet a child after sexual grooming, for which he was sentenced to 12 months in prison.

This offense led to him becoming involved in a “pedophile hunter” sting in which he groomed someone he believed to be a 14-year-old girl named Ellie.

He sent explicit pictures to another decoy account and arranged to meet the supposed teenager in Newton-le-Willows.

Messages sent by the great-grandfather included “Don’t worry about your age,” “Let’s meet, kiss and touch each other’s bodies,” and “You can’t get pregnant from me.”

He also described sexual acts he wanted to perform on the girl and acts he wanted from her.

Arriving at the arranged meeting, he was confronted by the pedophile hunters and arrested by the police.

In defense of her client, who severed all family ties with his insult, Bernadette Smith spoke of his expectation of a long prison sentence and that his best mitigation was his guilty plea.

“He wants an intervention to try to understand and get to the heart of why he’s committing these offenses at such a late stage in his adulthood,” she said.

The court also heard him being classified as high risk of harm to children but low risk of recidivism, which Judge David Aubrey commented: “Doesn’t make much sense”.

Ahead of the verdict, he said: “These crimes are so serious that only immediate imprisonment can be justified.

“They undoubtedly have a sexual interest in children and it seems to run deep.

“You have had conversations with a person you believed to be under the age of 13, and the conversations took place over a period of time that illustrates your deep-rooted pedophilia.”

Cottam, of Mason Avenue in Padgate, Warrington, was sentenced to 56 months in prison

The court also ordered that he be indefinitely the subject of sex offender registration and notification requirements and a 10-year sexual harm prevention order.