Kettering man, 71, caught out trying to groom young girls sixty years younger than him
A Kettering pensioner was twice caught out trying to talk to young girls online by an online paedophile hunter group
Wiliam David Griffiths was first caught by the group of campaigners back in 2023 and was arrested. But before any charges reached the court, he was caught again in December 2024 engaging in abhorrent conversations with a person he believed to be a 12-year-old girl.
Now the 71-year-old has been jailed for more than two years.
In April last year before the case came to court, police applied to magistrates for a sexual risk order against Griffiths, of Grasmere Road, Kettering. SROs are designed to protect the public while police investigations into defendants are ongoing. The legal order prevented him from communicating with anyone under the age of 18 and from having a mobile phone without declaring it to the police.
But in December last year the online predator hunters again knocked at his door. They had been communicating with him on a mobile phone, against the terms his sexual risk order.
Griffiths thought that he had been communicating with a 12-year-old girl, but it was actually a decoy and the entire scenario had been set up by the vigilante group.
The case was before Northampton Crown Court last week.
In footage posted online, Griffiths downplayed his behaviour on camera. "I might have been talking to someone but I’ve not shown any pictures,” he said.
He admitted sending a picture of the upper half of his body and asking the girl to do the same, and when asked by his wife why he’d done it, he said it was just a ‘friendly chat’.
He accused the group of ‘picking on him.’
The livestream showed Griffiths being arrested. He was later remanded in prison before pleading guilty to two counts of attempting sexual communication with a child, and one of of arranging a child sexual offence.
He was before Her Honour Judge Rebecca Crane for sentence last week. He was given 27 months in prison and was made the subject of a ten-year sexual harm prevention order. He will have to sign the sex offenders’ register until 2035 and is banned from communicating with any child, from using a phone without informing his offender manager and of deleting his internet history.