Teen detained for kidnapping

Kirk Yates had met up with the youngster, with whom he had earlier been in the same care home in Skelmersdale, for two or three hours despite police having previously served him with a warning notice to keep away from him.

The 19-year-old later went on to threaten the boy on Facebook not to co-operate with police about his disappearance with him, despite bail conditions not to contact him.

Liverpool Crown Court heard that when his mobile phone was seized police found he had accessed an internet Kidschat site five times and there were highly sexualised conversations between adults and prepubescent boys. There was also an indecent image of a boy aged about four erotically posing naked and two indecent cartoon images of young boys, said prosecutor Robert Dudley.

Yates, of Fishergate Hill, Preston, admitted child abduction, attempting to pervert the course of justice, possessing two indecent images and one charge of making one.

Sentencing Yates, who suffers from Asperger’s Syndrome, Judge Denis Watson, QC, said reports showed a sexual motivation in his behaviour. “You present a risk to young boys” he told him. He described the case as “troubling and sad” with a worrying background. Social services had become involved in his life when he was 12 after behaving a sexually inappropriate way with an eight-year-old boy and he began receiving therapy.

The judge imposed an indefinite Sexual Harm Prevention Order, restricting Yates’s internet use and contact with children. He said that after having studied reports he was unable to assess when the risks he poses will come to an end.

Defending, Michael Flynn said Yates, who has a “low IQ”, has no previous convictions. “There has been difficulty in him coming to terms about what took place and what motivated him,” he said.