Devon Wildgust – Ammanford

A judge praised paedophile hunting teams after a pervert was caught after sending a video of himself masturbating to someone he believed was a 14-year-old girl just 15 minutes after meeting her online

Devon Wildgust contacted two profiles on social media in a matter of days and sent them a series of sexual messages and requests.

Unaware he was really chatting to decoy accounts being run by so-called paedophile hunters.

A judge at Swansea Crown Court said he was “constantly surprised” that people were continuing to appear before the courts for such offending given how skilled the police and those running decoy accounts were at identifying them, and given the repercussions for defendants which often included “being hounded from the community where they live”.

Alexandra Wilson, prosecuting, told the court that in November this year the 22-year-old defendant contacted the profiles of two people purporting to be young teenage girls on the social media platform Connect2.me.

In fact the profiles were being operated by adult volunteers from so-called paedophile hunter groups.

She said the defendant messaged the first decoy on November 16 and despite being told the ‘girl’ was 13, Wildgust continued with the conversation and swapped phone numbers before moving their exchanges to WhatsApp.

The court heard the conversation soon turned sexual, with the defendant telling the ‘girl’ he could teach her how to take nude photographs.

He sent a picture of a naked woman and told her to take a picture like it.

Wildgust then sent the decoy a video of himself masturbating, and when the decoy sent a picture supposedly showing the ‘girl’ in her school uniform, the defendant replied: “I wish I could rip that uniform off and make love to you”.

Wildgust also told the decoy he had been “playing with” a friend’s little sister.

The court heard that three days later Wildgust contacted a second decoy profile on the same app.

Just 17 minutes after making contact he sent a video of himself masturbating. When the decoy told him she was 14, the defendant asked: “Do you like older men?”

Wildgust then asked the decoy for nude pictures and asked to see her boobs, and when she replied that her mum had told her never to send pictures the defendant replied that her mother didn’t have to know.

The prosecutor said members of a paedophile hunter group went to the defendant’s house in Ammanford on November 22 and detained him before calling the police.

Wildgust was arrested and his phone was seized, but he refused to reveal the PIN code and the court heard that attempts to get into the device using specialist computer software had so far been unsuccessful.

However, the phone number was the same as the one linked to the WhatsApp account used in the conversations.

During a police interview Wildgust told officers the sexual abuse of his friend’s sister hadn’t happened and that he had “made it up”. He was subsequently released on bail.

The court heard that on November 26 police received a call from Wildgust’s step-father saying the defendant had turned up at his house and was refusing to leave – which was in breach of his bail conditions – because he was “fearful of being hurt in the community”.

Devon Wildgust, of Lon y Gruglas, Ammanford, had previously pleaded guilty to two offences of attempted sexual communication with a child and one of attempting to incite a child to engage in a sexual act when he appeared in the dock for sentencing. He has no previous convictions.

With a discount for his guilty pleas, Judge Geraint Walters handed Wildgust a sentence of two years in prison.

He will serve up to half the sentence in custody before being released on licence to serve the remainder in the community.

Wildgust must also register as a sex offender for the next 10 years and was made the subject of a sexual harm prevention order to run for the same length of time.