CUSTOMERS of Clearways Garden Services in Milford Haven have been wondering why their local gardener, David Richard Badham, hasn’t turned up for some of his rounds recently, but all has now become clear following his sentencing at Swansea Crown Court.
He was keeping a low profile following a police operation run from Northern Ireland set up to catch paedophiles.
The seemingly respectable green fingered businessman had spent months engaged in sordid and disgusting online chats with what he believed to be a schoolboy. But in fact, his intended victim was an undercover police officer – engaged in a sting operation set up to snare dangerous online offenders.
David Richard Badham repeatedly told the imaginary online victim in very graphic terms he wanted sex with him and asked him to travel to Carmarthen so they could meet and “play”.
Swansea Crown Court heard Badham’s online activities have cost him his good name, “his business, and his family”.
Stephen Rees, prosecuting, said Badham was caught in an undercover operation run by police in Northern Ireland.
Between January 2019 and June 2019, the defendant engaged in highly sexualised conversations with someone he believed to be a 14-year-old boy.
Badham sent a series of graphic messages describing what he wanted to do to the boy and what sex acts he wanted the boy to perform on him.
Despite knowing the age of the would-be victim, the defendant requested photographs of his genitals and sent him videos of a man, believed to be the defendant himself, performing a sex act.
Dyfed Thomas, defence barrister, said the behaviour and resulting conviction was a “substantial fall from grace” which “had cost him his good name, business, and also his family”.
It was only a letter from his wife which saved him from an immediate custodial sentence. The letter, which the court heard showed there was “another side to this man”, who had no previous convictions.
Judge Paul Thomas QC told Badham he had “paedophile tendencies towards young boys” and said the sooner he came to terms with that and sought help the better.
Giving the defendant a one-third discount for his guilty pleas the judge sentenced him to a total of 16 months in prison suspended for two years and ordered him to complete the Horizon sex offenders programme, a rehabilitation course, and 150 hours of unpaid work.
Badham will also now be a registered sex offender for the next 10 years and was made the subject of a sexual harm prevention order for the same length of time
