A VIDEO shows the moment a man from Barrow was confronted with grooming allegations by a team of paedophile hunters.
Dean Fawcett admitted he engaged in sexual communications with a child for the purpose of obtaining sexual gratification when he appeared at South Cumbria Magistrates’ Court on November 7.
The 44-year-old also admitted charges of attempting to meet a girl under 16 following grooming and inciting a girl to engage in sexual activity by asking her to provide indecent images of herself.
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Court records show the offences took place in Barrow between October and November this year.
Shadow Decoys, an online team dedicated to exposing paedophiles and child predators by posing as children online, logged the messages and photographs received.
Its founder, known as Wick Decoy, said: "As soon as the 'child' receives an explicit image from a suspected sex offender there is a countdown before they must be handed into the police.
"If we cannot get a team to go out for us we hand the evidence into the police so they can arrest the suspect to protect children from being contacted by the suspect and protect others from going through the same, which can potentially cause psychological struggles for the child in life.
"As a team, we do this to help reduce the risk of children being contacted by these predators."
Shadow Decoys contacted Aftermath - Confronting Evil Online, a team which goes out to confront suspected groomers once there is evidence.
In this case, the team were able to go to an address after the team said Fawcett agreed to meet what he thought was a 14-year-old girl, when it was in fact a decoy account.
The footage in the 17-minute long video shows the team confronting Fawcett as they hold him there before police arrive.
He was granted conditional bail by magistrates and will next appear at Preston Crown Court on December 19.
Cumbria Police declined to comment.
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