A police officer who was caught by undercover cops arranging to journey to London so he may sexually abuse an eight-year-old woman has been jailed for greater than eight years.
Lee Cunliffe, 40, was a serving officer inside Better Manchester Police when he first started messaging a lady he believed was the mom of the kid on on the spot messaging app Kik in September 2020.
He used the identify ‘Steve S mancgent1’ to talk to the lady, who was truly an undercover officer within the Met Police, telling her he would go to London to sexually abuse her daughter.
Cunliffe appeared at Liverpool Crown Courtroom to be sentenced on Thursday after pleading responsible to arranging the fee of a kid intercourse offence, perverting the course of justice, misconduct in a public workplace, distributing indecent photographs of a kid, and three counts of creating indecent photographs.
Recorder of Liverpool, Decide Andrew Menary QC, stated: ‘The kind of conduct you had been considering with this very younger baby may hardly have been extra severe.’
He was jailed for eight years and 4 months.
Arthur Gibson, prosecuting, informed the court docket {that a} police probe revealed Cunliffe had despatched the messages, together with from the IP deal with of a police-owned pc at Swinton Police Station, and he was arrested in October 2020.
A subsequent search of his dwelling in Hindley Inexperienced, Wigan, led to police discovering a laptop computer he had been utilizing to entry indecent pictures of kids.
This included pictures of a ‘plainly susceptible’ teenage woman who had made a grievance to Better Manchester Police in 2018, the court docket heard.
Lee Cunliffe, based mostly at Better Manchester Police’s Salford district, has been jailed after pleading responsible to at least one rely of making an attempt to rearrange/facilitate the fee of a kid intercourse offence, three counts of creating an indecent {photograph}/pseudo-photograph of a kid, one rely of distributing an indecent {photograph}/pseudo-photograph of a kid, one rely of misconduct in a public workplace and one rely of perverting the course of justice. Three different prices had been ordered to lie on file
Cunliffe was sentenced to eight years and 4 months’ imprisonment at Liverpool Crown Courtroom
Mr Gibson stated the woman alleged her boyfriend had taken indecent pictures of her and distributed them with out her data.
Cunliffe, a trainee within the Felony Investigation Division, was allotted to the case and the suspect was arrested and his pc and cellphone seized.
He later wrote an entry on the crime log claiming there was nothing on both gadget regarding the offence, the court docket heard.
Nonetheless, Mr Gibson informed the court docket: ‘The truth is, each units contained each nonetheless and shifting indecent pictures of kids, a complete of 227 being accessible.
The pc was returned to the suspect with the indecent pictures nonetheless on and no additional motion was taken.
Decide Menary stated: ‘What you probably did in relation to this woman and this case is stunning and strikes on the very coronary heart of that basis of belief that the general public have invested within the police service.
‘The consequence for the teenage complainant is that her grievance was by no means correctly pursued and she or he remained significantly liable to additional disclosure.
‘The query, frankly, is that this: why ought to she ever belief the police ever once more about something?’
The misconduct in a public workplace cost associated to failing to correctly examine the case.
The court docket heard a search of Cunliffe’s laptop computer additionally discovered proof of information from between 2014 and 2018, which had been indicative of kid abuse.
Mr Gibson stated: ‘The proof exhibits the defendant did have an curiosity in baby pornography and the sexual abuse of kids.
‘Nonetheless, there may be some proof to recommend that he recognised this and was in a state of turmoil about it.’
Police additionally discovered a pocket book inside Cunliffe’s dwelling, which included entries saying he had a intercourse and porn habit for which he was receiving counselling.
Julian King, defending, stated in mitigation that Cunliffe was a married father and had been a police officer for 17 years.
He added that Cunliffe had been seeing a psychotherapist, who stated he had compulsive sexual behaviour dysfunction.