A married maths teacher and former policeman accused of trying to groom a girl of twelve online, but caught in a “sting” by an undercover cop, was jailed for two years.

Barry Lander, aged 48, of Bron y Graig, Bodedern, had been convicted on a 10-2 majority verdict, by a Caernarfon crown court jury, of attempting to incite a child to engage in sexual activity during October 2019. He had denied the charge during a two-day trial.

Defence barrister Matthew Dunford said :” Barry Lander has already paid a very heavy price. Irrespective of the court sentence he’s lost his good name, he was a police officer, was a teacher, he’s lost his employment. It appears that he may have lost his wife, one hopes that’s not the case.“

Judge David Hale made a sexual harm prevention order for 10 years and Lander must register as a sex offender for the same time. He can’t work with children.

Judge Hale told him :”One day, when you were perhaps at a low ebb, for some reason you engaged in entering this chatroom.”

The judge said Lander was “fixated” by his claim that he thought straightaway that it was a “vigilante.” Judge Hale said :”You can’t face up to the obvious truth.”

He remarked : “It’s incomprehensible why you as a teacher and a man of your past should do it, happily married. You have lost all of that. You have lost an awful lot and no child was harmed or was at risk of harm.”

Lander had claimed he knew from an early stage it wasn’t a child chatting online and thought it may have been a vigilante paedophile hunter who he was “stringing” along.

But prosecutor Simon Rogers alleged he was getting a “thrill” from sexually explicit chat with someone he thought was a girl. Quizzed about his choice of profile name “bad hub,” Lander insisted :”It was just a name I made up. There was no specific reason. It’s a hub of people. I just put the word ‘bad’ in front of it.”

Mr Rogers asked whether Lander had mentioned “Candy Crush” because a young girl would be interested in such a game.

“You asked ‘is it just you and your foster mum’? Was that you working out the family dynamic?” Mr Rogers also said to him. Lander replied :”No.”

Lander told the jury he sent a real photograph of himself “in error” to someone he thought was an adult and web paedophile hunter.

The prosecution alleged there were “clear elements of grooming” and Lander had started to sexualise the chat and had been “pushing the boundaries.” During the web messages Lander had commented “you deserve someone nice” and “you are awesome.” But in court he disputed that he was trying to “curry favour.”

In one conversation, he’d also asked :”How bad are you really?” Lander maintained he was “stringing them along, trying to get some reaction. I was trying to help the police service by stringing this person along, by keeping these people occupied.”

Lander had discussed him staying at a Cardiff hotel and his lustful desires including about teaching his web contact “a lesson.”

He told his barrister that although he had been told the other web user was twelve, he believed it had been someone in their 30s or 40s because of their literacy skills including the use of the word “actually” and apostrophes.

He’d wanted to waste the time of the “vigilante.”