A MAN targeted two York seven-year-olds in a frightening campaign inspired by the Soham murders, a court heard.

Michael Anderson, 40, followed the pair in his car and wrote letters to the schoolgirls declaring he wanted to sexually assault them.

He was sentenced to three years in prison at York Crown Court yesterday after pleading guilty to trying to induce each of them to commit an act of gross indecency with him.

Anderson, of Woodhall Glade, Huntington, York, also pleaded guilty to a third charge of indecently assaulting a nine-year-old when he was 13.

Jonathan Carroll, prosecuting, said: "He has begun targeting local children and has made reference to abducting children, with his risk escalating recently, as he started to contact or groom children. He is less able to control his impulses."

In August last year, he followed two girls in his car before the mother of one of the girls scared him away.

Days later he returned, after which one of the girls' fathers found two notes on the drive trying to induce the girls to commit an act of gross indecency with him.

Mr Carroll said: "He has described wishing to abduct children if he has to, to have sex with them, which seems to be the result of desperation and the high-profile Soham case."

Letters sent to the young girls declared he would abduct and rape them.

Nicholas Barker said in mitigation that Anderson had always been a social misfit, due to physical disabilities.

He said as a child he was abused by older children resulting in his "defiant sexuality".

Anderson addressed the court, saying he was "full of remorse, full of forgiveness, and would not hurt a fly, but was instead loving and kind-hearted."

Judge Gavin Barr Young ordered a prison sentence of three years and an extended period of five years on licence.

Updated: 09:10 Saturday, July 26, 2003