A 25-year-old Nigerian student, Anderson Ishiekwene, has been sentenced to three years in prison in the UK and is likely to be deported after trying to meet a minor for sex.
Based on a BBC report on Monday, Ishiekwene was picked up in Washington, England, after arranging to meet someone he thought was a 14-year-old girl. The account was actually run by an online group that poses as children to catch paedophiles.
Court documents showed Ishiekwene came to the UK on a student visa in August 2025 and lived in Sunderland. On January 2, he reached out to the profile on Facebook and later moved the chat to WhatsApp.
Prosecutors at Newcastle Crown Court said that over the course of 8 days, he sent over 300 pages of messages to the decoy, even after being told several times that she was 14.
During the conversations, he asked about her school and uniform, made comments about her body, asked for nude photos, and sent a picture of his own genitals. He also kept asking her to delete their messages.
When she refused to send pictures, he said it was “unfair” and argued that sending such images was “normal in a relationship.”
They later set a meeting for January 10 at the Galleries shopping centre in Washington. Ishiekwene told the decoy he wanted to kiss and touch her “like lovers.”
On arriving, he was confronted by members of the hunter group and then arrested by police.
He denied going to meet a child for sex, but a jury convicted him after a 3-day trial of attempting to meet a child after grooming. He had already pleaded guilty to attempting sexual communication with a child.
Judge Robert Spragg said what Ishiekwene planned for that day was meant to lead to sex later. The probation report also suggested he has an attraction to children.
Along with the jail term, he was placed on the sex offenders register indefinitely and given a Sexual Harm Prevention Order. The judge noted he will likely face automatic deportation once he finishes his sentence.
