Leeds Crown Court: Paedophile asked woman to send vile pictures of her own daughter

“Persistent” paedophile Lee Glover was already the subject of a sexual harm prevention order when he chatted with the account from July 19 to August 3 last year, Leeds Crown Court heard. Behind the account was an undercover police officer, posing as a mother who was sexually active with her nine-year-old daughter in order to catch paedophiles.

As well as asking for pictures of the child, Glover shared eight indecent images of children with the undercover officer, including images of abuse involving a baby or toddler. Police traced the account to his mother’s home address and the 34-year-old was arrested in August 2022.

He was interviewed by police in February of this year and answered no comment. On March 9, officers visited Glover’s home address in Leeds and asked him to hand over his devices.

Police seized a Samsung Galaxy mobile and found 378 images that Glover had tried to wipe from the phone. There were 153 images of the most serious kind, category A, including abuse of very young children, as well as 97 category B and 128 category C images. There were a further 16 indecent images of children that were accessible on the phone.

Glover had also communicated with an account purporting to be a 14-year-old child. While there was no graphic sexual chat, he professed his love for the girl and said he wanted to have children with her when she was 18.

Prosecutor Brian Russell said that although the offences happened online, Glover had shown “graphic fantasising” about contact offences.

The defendant, now of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to making indecent images of children and distributing indecent images of children. He already has convictions for the first offence in 2012 and 2018.

In mitigation, Philip Mahoney told the court that Glover has autism spectrum disorder, which a doctor concluded was linked to an addictive personality, and that Glover had admitted his sexual interest in children.

Mr Mahoney said: “Despite that admitted interest, the almost compulsive nature of his offending does suggest a strong overlap with his autism spectrum disorder and the compulsive way that he seems to commit these offences.”

Judge Simon Batiste concluded that Glover had shown a “persistence” of offending and posed a significant risk of carrying out more offences.

He told the defendant: “Clearly you knew that the police were onto you again and that you were in trouble already. It did not act as any kind of stoppage to your behaviour.”

Glover was jailed for three years and eight months and handed a tougher sexual harm prevention order, to run indefinitely.