A CONVICTED sex offender caught trying to groom underage girls for sex after being released early from prison has been jailed indefinitely.

PhD graduate and IT worker Nicholas Pierce, 32, had served just six months of a 14-month sentence after he offered a 12-year-old £500 to have his baby during sex chats over the internet.

Just eight months later, in December 2007, he was arrested again after being caught in a police honey trap.

He began chatting to a 14-year-old girl called ‘Katie’ and, within seven minutes had sent her an explicit picture of himself.

Undercover

Pierce, of Church Walk, Wilmington, also asked for her home address so he could “come round when her mum was at work for sex”.

But the pervert did not realise ‘Katie’ was an undercover police officer from the Met Police’s Paedophile Unit.

Police raided his home and found a stash of child porn saved on his computer as well as photographs of the girl in the bath and of himself performing sex acts on a 15-year-old girl.Pierce admitted one count of attempting to incite a child into sexual activity, one count of attempting to incite a child to look at an image of sexual activity, one count of taking an indecent image of a child, two counts of possessing indecent images of children and two counts of making indecent images of children.

A psychiatric report read to the court claimed Pierce suffered from a disorder called social phobia, and was not a paedophile, just lonely.

However, passing sentence at Southwark Crown Court on Monday, Judge Peter Testar said Pierce posed a serious risk of harm to the public and was a danger to children.

The judge said: “He comes from a highly-respectable background and is highly qualified.

“I am driven to the conclusion that Mr Pierce does actually represent a danger to children and he seems to me as somebody whose activity does cross or can cross from the world of fantasy to the world of action.”

Judge Testar ordered Pierce to serve a minimum sentence of 16 months before being considered for parole.

Pierce will now be on the sex offenders’ register for life and is subject to a sexual offences prevention order for the next 10 years.