Portadown man who sent 'disgusting' messages to decoy and was caught in online child sex sting avoids jail

Sentencing Lee Alan Sheffield at Craigavon Magistrates Court, District Judge Michael Ranaghan said while he accepted “people think the best way to deal with anyone like this is to send them to prison”.

He explained however that as Sheffield was being prosecuted in the petty sessions, the maximum sentence after a trial is six months but because the 46-year-old admitted his guilt, that had to be reflected in a discount of the sentence.

Judge Ranaghan said that in effect, he could impose a four-month jail sentence which would mean Sheffield serves two months in jail during which time, “no therapeutic work will be done”.

"Obviously it’s a very serious and significant case and everyone’s overriding aim is that it has too stop,” said the judge, adding that sending Sheffield to jail for two months is “pointless”.

Sheffield, from Tandragee Road in Portadown, had earlier entered a guilty plea to a single count of attempted sexual communication with a child in that between October 29 and November 7, 2023, “for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification, intentionally attempted to communicate with a person under 16 years, the communication being sexual or intended to encourage the said person under 16 to make a communication that was sexual”.

Opening the facts of the case, a prosecution lawyer outlined how Sheffield had contacted the social media profile of an underage, 14-year-old girl.

Unbeknownst to the defendant however, it was a fake profile being operated by a local paedophile hunter group and the lawyer told the court the conversation between the decoy and Sheffield was “extremely explicit”.

The paedophile hunters attended at Sheffield’s home and after the group broadcast online the confrontation at his front door, police officers arrested him and were handed a file of evidence containing screenshots of the messages.

The online video of the sting shows an doorstep interrogation, with members of the paedophile hunters group putting to Sheffield that he “badgered” the ‘girl’ for images, asked her if she wanted to perform a sex act on him and made explicit comments.

"It was a stupid, stupid mistake,” laments Sheffield, half hiding behind a front door decorated for Christmas, conceding that he “offered her £200 for indecent pictures”.

Lodging a plea in mitigation, defence counsel Aaron Thompson conceded it was a “difficult and sensitive case” and highlighted that because of the video being broadcast, Sheffield “has already faced a large amount of social media publicity”.

The messages are “disgusting and everyone would be properly alarmed by them”, the lawyer told the court, but submitted that given Sheffield’s clear record, “I think a probation order would meet the public interest” in the case.

Imposing the two-year probation order, Judge Ranaghan warned Sheffield that if he commits any further offences “my only option will be the pointless two months in prison”.

In addition to the probation order, the judge also ordered Sheffield to sign the police sex offenders register and he also made him the subject of a five-year Sexual Offences Prevention Order.