PETER WATTS FROM HATFIELD SENTENCED FOR CHILD GROOMING AND CHILD PORNOGRAPHY IN LONDON

In August 2008, a former university lecturer from Hatfield, Peter Watts, was sentenced to two years in prison after being found guilty of serious crimes involving child exploitation and possession of indecent images. Watts, aged 51 and residing in Haseldine Meadows, Hatfield, became the focus of a police investigation that uncovered disturbing evidence of his involvement in online child abuse activities.

Watts was apprehended following an undercover operation conducted by the Metropolitan Police’s Paedophile Unit. An officer, posing as a 14-year-old girl named Katie, engaged Watts in an internet chatroom. The police had set up this sting to catch individuals attempting to groom minors for sexual purposes. During the course of their online interactions, Watts expressed interest in meeting the girl in person and arranged to do so in a park located in Kennington, southeast London, in October of the previous year.

On the day of the planned meeting, Watts, a father of one with three condoms in his pocket, traveled to the designated location. However, instead of meeting a minor, he was met by a covert police officer who had been monitoring his activities. The officer promptly arrested Watts, who later claimed that he had been on a 'suicide mission' and that he knew he was likely to be apprehended when he set out to meet the supposed teenager.

Following his arrest, authorities conducted a thorough search of Watts’s residence. The investigation uncovered a disturbing cache of over 5,000 indecent images of children stored on a computer hard drive hidden in his attic. The images depicted young girls subjected to various forms of abuse, including sadomasochism, with some files labeled with terms such as “pre-teen,” “Lolita,” and “paedo kiddy,” indicating their explicit and exploitative nature.

Watts had previously admitted to six counts of making indecent images of children. During his trial at Southwark Crown Court, he denied grooming the girl for sex, asserting that his visit to meet the imaginary teen was a reckless act driven by despair. He claimed he was on a ‘suicide mission’ and anticipated being arrested.

Judge Nicholas Lorraine-Smith delivered the sentence, emphasizing the gravity of Watts’s actions. He stated, “If people didn’t decide to look at these images or collect them then children such as those in the images would not be put through the various degrees of degradation that they have been put through. That is why sentences of imprisonment have been suggested in cases of this type to represent that it is a risk not worth taking. These images would themselves have been enough to send you to prison but you allowed your fantasies to turn into what you hoped would become a reality.”

In addition to his prison term, Watts was ordered to sign the Sex Offender’s Register for the next ten years. He was also subjected to a sexual offences prevention order and prohibited from working with children in any capacity, reflecting the serious concern over his potential risk to minors in the future.