Paedophile pinned to ground by vigilantes after being duped in undercover sting
A man who was tackled to the ground by vigilantes after agreeing to meet an underage girl for sex has escaped jail.
Stuart Burnett, 35, from Billingham, was arrested in November last year after an undercover group known as the Guardians of the North confronted him in Sunderland.
Burnett struck up an online relationship with a girl he believed was 14 who he later arranged to meet. Instead, he was talking to the men who would eventually pin him to the ground and expose him.
The former Fedex worker was led to a car where he was asked questions by the men, agreeing he was there to meet up with a girl he understood to be underage.
He told the group: ‘I did not want to come here. I was going to see my girlfriend.
‘But I didn’t go and see my girlfriend because she was busy with someone else.’
Burnett earlier sent the decoy two pictures of his penis before agreeing to meet her for sex.
The court heard he even messaged the decoy, known as ‘Louise’, on his way to the meeting point to make sure he wasn’t being ‘set up’.
Ian West, prosecuting, told the court Burnett said to the fake profile he wanted to teach her ‘sexual matters in the bedroom’.
He said: ‘He suggested that they meet, she tells him her parents will be out of the house she lives in and arrangements are made to travel to Sunderland to her
house.’
Chris Morrison, in mitigation, said his client was remorseful and left his job at Fedex as a result of the arrest.
However, Judge Jonathan Carroll said Burnett was ‘devious’ for arranging to meet the girl behind her parent’s backs.
He said: ‘The moment that line appeared on your phone that she was only 14
was the moment you should have immediately desisted engaging and said, “I can’t talk to you because you’re under 16” – but you didn’t.’
Burnett pleaded guilty to one count of meeting with a child after grooming them and two counts of sexual conversations with a child.
He received a two-year suspended sentence and a five-year sexual harm prevention order. He was also placed on a three-month night curfew and ordered to do 50 days of rehabilitation.
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