By Chris Williamson-
A 31-year-old paedophile who fooled a 15-year-old girl and her family into thinking he was a teenager has been jailed.
Child sex offender Clinton Stothard groomed the girl online and tricked her into believing he was her boyfriend. Her and her family trusted him so much, he even went on holiday with them.
How she and her family believed him is anybody’s guess. Some members of the press present at the hearing were heard commenting that the girl and her family must have been ”thick” to believe him, but the paedo had them all fooled. Stothard was described as “every parent’s worst nightmare” , and the pervert also targeted a number of other girls online, encouraging them to send sexually explicit photos to him. One of his victims- a 14-year-old girl from Bristol -exchanged over 3,000 calls and texts with him during a two week period.
The Eye Of Media.Com heard that Avon and Somerset police officers in Bristol working on Operation Topaz discovered the extent of Stothard’s offending.
The police pilot operation which tackles child sexual exploitation in the city pounced on Stothard after Bristol Barnardo’s Against Sexual Exploitation (BASE) Project raised the alarm about his contact with a vulnerable girl.
The investigation led to the arrest of another paedophile, from Hartcliffe , Owen Hall, who also groomed the same 14-year-old Bristol girl targeted by Stothard. The news comes 24 hours after a blind 79-year-old paedophile was exposed after he typed the word ‘nude children’ into his smartphone at a Carphone Warehouse shop.
Frederick Cunningham had exposed himself when he repeated the shocking words while showing a customer assistant a problem he had with accessing certain websites via voice-activation. Detective Constable Kim O’Donnell, of Avon and Somerset Police, said in a press statement: “Clinton Stothard is a predatory paedophile who masqueraded as a 19-year-old and used a variety of aliases as he befriended and groomed his victims.
“Such was the extent of his deceit that he effectively groomed one girl’s entire family – winning their trust so much they felt comfortable taking him on holiday.“The intensity of his grooming was quite frankly shocking, with another of his victims bombarded with thousands of calls and texts over a short period of time.“I hope the sentence handed down by the court goes some way to providing all those he preyed on with some sense of closure and that this case sends a message to those who commit such crimes, that we are committed to protecting the most vulnerable members of our society and geography will not be a barrier for us.”