Pervert who tried to lure schoolboy to gay sauna for underage sex has been spared jail

The “14-year-old” in question was in fact a fiction created on the dating app Grindr by a paedophile hunter who then informed the police of 41-year-old Adam Gill’s illegal activities.

Gill, of Timperley Lane, Leigh, has now appeared before a Bolton Crown Court, having pleaded guilty to intentionally attempting to cause or incite a boy aged 14, not reasonably believing he was aged 16 or over, to engage in penetrative sexual activity.

He was given a three-year community order which includes attending a sexual offenders’ treatment programme, a five-year sexual harm prevention order and must sign onto the sex offenders’ register for the same amount of time.

The court also barred him from working with children.

The court heard that Gill was initially caught out by a “hunter” on Grindr by someone who had set up a false profile as a 14-year-old boy called Jason.

When the police attended his house they seized his phone which showed a conversation with an Ian Howard about meeting a young boy for sex at the Basement gay sauna in Manchester.

Gill offered a guilty plea on the basis that it was just a fantasy and there was no intention to carry it out.

Howard, 67, of Renwick Road, Liverpool, was himself arrested and charged with attempting to arrange or facilitate an act which he intended another person to do, namely Adam Gill.

He denied this, the defence applied for the charge to be dismissed by the judge and on the same day that Gill was sentenced, the prosecution offered no evidence against Howard and he walked free.