Phillip Hobson – Stoke On Trent

A compulsive child predator has been jailed after admitting to police that he ‘just can’t stop’.

Phillip Hobson believed he was talking to four underage girls before being confronted by paedophile hunters in a sting.

Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court heard that the 63-year-old was still on licence for his most recent conviction when he was exposed once again.

Hobson has eight previous convictions for 22 offences, including attempting to meet children in 2016 and 2018, before attempting to sexually communicate with a minor in 2020.

Now the defendant – who is ‘largely impotent – has been handed a four-year and six-month prison sentence. He was also slapped with a two-year extended licence period.

Prosecutor Matthew Ness said: “One of the decoys posed as a 14-year-old girl called Emily. On June 17 last year, the defendant messaged Emily on the chat platform Meet4u.

He asked her age and she confirmed she was nearly 15 years old. The defendant then engaged in a sexual conversation. He asked if she wanted ‘dirty cam fun’.

“The second decoy posed as a 13-year-old girl called Mia. On May 27 last year, he messaged her on Meet4u.

After she confirmed her age, he engaged her in a sexual conversation. He told Mia he was sat in his boxer shorts due to the heat. He said he wished they could go to Scotland together.

He said to her ‘I’ve even had girls as young as 12 ask me to send them money and then we’ll do sex on cam’.

“The final decoy, Emma, was posing as a 15-year-old girl. The defendant messaged her on the Meet4u platform on June 17 last year. He asked her if she would ‘like some sexy fun on cam’.

He told her she ‘would look good in a bikini’ and that she would ‘look sexy dressed up’. He asked if he could scrub her back and rub lotion on her.”

Investigations later exposed Hobson’s attempts to incite a child to engage in penetration while talking to a fourth decoy.

Mr Ness continued: “The defendant messaged a decoy purporting to be a 14-year-old girl called Stacy. He reached out to her on the Meet4u platform on May 27 last year. The decoy shared her age in the first few messages. He suggested it would be okay if she shared nude pictures.

“She said she wasn’t sure if she could send images like that. Undeterred, the defendant messaged again on June 16. She reminded him she was 14. He suggested they get drunk with his friends and get strippers. He said he could get naked while they were drunk. After this, he suggested they could have ‘sexy fun on camera’.

“She said she would be nervous about her mum coming in. But the defendant persisted. Stacy asked the defendant to send a picture of himself, which he did. It was not explicit but the picture clearly showed the defendant.”

When interviewed by police, Hobson admitted: ‘I just can’t stop doing it and I don’t know why’.

The defendant, of King Street, Stoke, later pleaded guilty to three counts of attempting to sexually communicate with a child, one count of attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity and six counts of breaching a sexual harm prevention order (SHPO).

Recorder Sunil Khanna said: “The question I need to ask myself is this – is there a significant risk of you committing further offences? If so, is there a significant risk of you causing significant harm? The probation service originally assessed you as very high risk but now again as still high risk of causing serious harm to female children.

“Your previous convictions and your admissions that you cannot stop, along with the fact that you believed the girls you were communicating with were real, leads me to the conclusion that a determined sentence alone would be insufficient. Your offending is quite frankly relentless. It seems to me that the public need protection from you as a dangerous offender.

So the sentence will be an extended determinate sentence.”