A man who spent the night with a 12-year-old girl who he thought was 19 has been jailed for two-and-a-half years.
Carl Hodgson, 28, invited the child to his flat in Manchester city centre a few days after they first made contact via a popular adult dating app.
He filmed her on his mobile phone as she wore a body stocking and sent it to a friend, Manchester Crown Court heard.
Hodgson also pleasured himself while the girl looked on.
The defendant pleaded guilty at earlier hearings to causing or inciting a child under 13 to engage in sexual activity, engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child, distributing an indecent photograph of a child and making indecent photographs of a child.
In sentencing, Judge David Stockdale QC, the Recorder of Manchester, told him: “(The victim) was by reason of her age highly vulnerable to exploitation and she was no doubt impressed by you.
“This is most serious offending as you now fully appreciate. The effects on a child of such a young age of offending of this sort are really well too known and well too documented. These effects, in many cases, last for the rest of the child’s life.
“I take into account that while (the victim) was 12 years of age at the time of these offences you did not believe that to be the case. You thought, and on reasonable grounds, that she was over 16.” Read more
