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07
Oct
Harrogate man spared jail over online sexual messages to decoy
A Harrogate man has been spared prison after he admitted having online sex chats with what he believed to be an under-age girl.
Benjamin Binstead, 26, thought he was chatting to a child, but he had in fact been duped by an adult decoy posing as a young girl, York Crown Court heard.
The decoy was part of a “vigilante” group which patrolled the web to snare paedophiles preying on youngsters and turned up on Binstead’s doorstep and workplace when he was rumbled in April 2022.
However, the court heard that Binstead was on the autistic spectrum, struggled to form normal relationships and had tried to turn his life around since the offences three years ago, which was sufficient mitigation to spare him the clang of the prison gates.
Prosecutor James Yearsley asked for a sexual-harm prevention order to be imposed on Binstead for the protection of children but did not dispute that the Harrogate man’s autism had played a part in his depraved online behaviour.
Binstead appeared for sentence yesterday (October 6) after he admitted attempting to engage in sexual communication with a child and attempting to cause or incite a girl aged 13 to 15 to engage in sexual activity.
The offences were charged as attempts because the child was fictional and the internet chats were with an adult decoy.
Defence barrister Susannah Proctor said that Binstead had to endure the shame and embarrassment of the vigilante group turning up on his doorstep at his then home in a Harrogate village and live-streaming the incident on Facebook.
She said that Binstead’s arrest and criminal conviction had had a “huge, awful impact” on him and his parents.
Such was the “extremely traumatic” effect on Binstead and his parents that he could no longer live at the family home and was now residing in supported accommodation in Harrogate town centre.
She said the vigilantes had also turned up at Binstead’s workplace, resulting in him losing his job.
She added that Binstead, now of Haywra Street, had been bullied in the past due to his mental-health difficulties and lived his life “mainly online”.
She said that Binstead, a football fan, had struggled to form normal friendships, so would form relationships online “with people younger than himself”.
He had since sought help from a charity dedicated to reforming offenders and was attending church groups as part of his rehabilitation.
“Very considerable difficulties”
Judge Sean Morris, the Recorder of York, said it was clear that Binstead had “very considerable difficulties” which meant that he “operates in a different world to other people”.
He also sounded a cautionary note to vigilante groups which, while “very often hauling in big fish, often haul in inadequate and sad characters whose position is not their fault, although the offending is”.
He said that Binstead was one such individual and noted the long delay in the case reaching court.
He told Binstead:
Like many young men, you have ended up spending longer and longer on your computer.
Ever since you were born, you have had problems socially and that is due to the fact that you have been found to be on the autistic-disorder spectrum.
What you ended up doing was talking to somebody who you (thought) was under-age. I accept fully that you would not have gone through with anything, but you should not have done that.
The judge also noted that since the vigilante group turned up at his then home, Binstead and his parents had been “in a living hell”.
He added:
I don’t necessarily condemn vigilante groups: sometimes they land some pretty evil people, but sometimes they can also catch in their net the socially inadequate and the mentally challenged and there’s a difference between these kinds of people.
Binstead was given a three-year community order and ordered to complete up to 35 days’ rehabilitation activity. He was also made subject to a five-year sexual-harm prevention order to curb his online activities.
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