A SHARP eyed Tesco security guard looking out for shoplifters caught a paedophile instead.
The guard monitored Andrew Francis Forster, aged 27, via CCTV cameras because he did not have a basket and did not appear to be shopping.
He saw Forster approach three young girls, two aged seven and one aged six, and show them his mobile telephone.
Francis Jones, prosecuting, told Swansea crown court the CCTV cameras were so precise the guard could see Forster was showing them an indecent photograph of a child.
Forster, then of Fleming Crescent, Haverfordwest, west Wales, was arrested by police before he left the store.
As officers talked to him his telephone rang and when he unlocked it to take the call a screensaver appeared showing a naked girl of about five years of age performing a sex act on a man.
After his arrest police searched his home and found Forster had stored indecent images on four electronic devices, including his then girlfriend’s pink Acer laptop.
Forster admitted 26 offences in all, including three of attempting to get a girl aged under 16 to view an indecent image, possessing and making indecent images and possessing indecent cartoon images of children.
The barrister representing Forster, Carina Hughes, said he had been planning to marry but the relationship was now over and he had lost his job and his home. He had also spent five months in custody following his arrest.
She said Forster planned to leave Haverfordwest and live with his parents in North Wales.
Judge Huw Davies told Forster the girls in the photographs were “real victims in the hands of people who harm them for profit.”
Forster, he said, had behaved in a horrific way behind the back of a young woman who had been looking forward to getting married to him.
Forster was made the subject of a three year community order and placed under supervision for three years.
He was also ordered to attend a sex offenders’ programme and made the subject of a sexual offences prevention order restricting his contact with children.
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